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THE BEST 


AM E R I C AN 


ORATIONS 


OF TO-DAY 


Compiled by 


Harriet Blackstone 


Compiler 0/ " Neiv Pieces That Will -Take Prizes in 


Prize Speaking Contests.' 1 '' 


> , « « • • 


HINDS & NOBLE, Publishers 


31-33-35 West J5th Street New York City 






1 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS. 

Two Copies Received 

AUG 31 1903 

Copyright Entry 
JCUSS A, XXc. No 

COPY S. 



Copyright, 1903, by Hinds & Noble 



Co 



Our future Orators 



PREFACE. 

Now and then in the march of a Nation's 
life there occurs within a brief period a conflux 
of events memorable in history. Such a time 
carries with it into fame some of the men who 
live and toil for the welfare and honor of their 
country. 

It has been the aim of the editor to collect in 
this volume the best thoughts of the best Ameri- 
cans of this distinctively notable period in the his- 
tory of our own Nation — men who are most promi- 
nent in its affairs, and who stand as the highest 
types of honesty, intelligence and useful citizen- 
ship for the emulation of the youth of our land. 

How many men prominent to-day will be re- 
membered in years to come, no one living can 
foresee ; but the records in this book of the 
thoughts and words and deeds of this expansive 
period, are worthy of our thoughtful study. 

These addresses have, for the most part, been 
selected by the authors themselves, because they 
are in their own opinion best suited for the col- 
lection. Some few are retrospective ; they will 
serve by contrast to show us our development. 
Some are biographical ; they will keep us in mind 



VI PREFACE. 

of the fact that others paved the way for us — ■ 
that we are followers as well as leaders. 

The speeches of Webster, Clay, Pitt, Patrick 
Henry, Calhoun, Lincoln, Beecher, and many 
others, are to be found in almost every Speaker 
and Reader now published. They have been de- 
claimed for years from every school platform in 
the country, and with most inspiring influence. 

Andrew Draper says: "The old-time school 
declamation on recurring red-letter days in the 
regular routine of the early schools was a great 
stimulant to boys and girls. It was not more in 
the words that were heard than in the fact that 
the boys themselves gave expression to them. 
It is the doing of things which stirs ambition 
and creates power, even the doing of things 
which some one else has done. There are plenty 
of men prominent in affairs who would gladly 
testify to the uplifting influences of the master- 
pieces of oratory and literature on their own 
lives by means of the school declamation." 

This is true, and let us have unabated respect 
and reverence for the orators of the past, but let 
us also satisfy the universal demand for " some- 
thing new.''' The speeches in this volume meet 
this demand. They are certainly " new!' They 
deal with our present problems and methods of 
government. They proclaim the thoughts of 
our wisest men. They will educate and inspire 
for future effort. 



PREFACE. v11 

Requests for material for this collection have 
met with generous response from our leading 
statesmen, financiers, college presidents, minis- 
ters, and other prominent Americans from all 
parts of the country. To them we are indebted 
for the fine addresses presented here. It has 
afforded pleasure and has been an inspiration to 
the editor to note the uniform courtesy and 
kindly interest of these busy, great men of our 
Nation who have taken the time in the midst of 
their pressing duties to arrange these, their best 
thoughts, for the use of the students in our 
schools and colleges. Surely these gems of 
thought should help to make good citizens. 

To those who would declaim these orations 
the writer offers a few words of suggestion : 

Do not attempt to speak before an audience 
except after faithful preparation. Practice vocal 
exercises until your tones are clear and smooth 
and round. The voice need not be harsh and, 
loud to " carry " well. Practice articulation 
drills until it is easy to speak every word dis- 
tinctly and beautifully, for " all art is preceded 
by a certain mechanical skill." Never make a 
gesture unless it adds to the thought and makes 
the meaning plainer. Remember that you are 
simply the medium that presents the thoughts, 
and your aim should be to put yourself in perfect 
harmony, mentally and bodily, with your subject. 
In selecting your oration, make sure it is one 



Vlll PREFACE. 

that you heartily believe in, then memorize it so 
thoroughly that it shall seem to be your own ex- 
pression of your own ideas. Speak it without 
affectation — simply, earnestly, directly. Forget 
self — and your efforts will be worthy the atten- 
tion of your hearers. 

A speaker should either entertain, instruct, or 
inspire to action. Unless he can do this, he 
should not intrude upon the time and the atten- 
tion of his hearers. 

Do not rely upon inspiration. You can not 
speak well unless you know how, and you should 
not speak at all unless you have something that 
is worth saying. So let your reliance be based 
upon careful preparation, to the end that inspira- 
tion, when the moment comes, shall find its 
fitting vehicle in the mastery of your subject and 
your self. 

This advice should not discourage, for " it is 
constructive, and it tears down only to build better." 
The young man who can see in life the things 
worthwhile ; who can think of what he sees, and 
then tell it simply and earnestly, promises well 
— both for himself and for his country. 

Harriet Blackstone. 
May 12, 1903. 



CONTENTS 



Americanism .... 

Puritan Spirit, The . . 

Our Recent Diplomacy . 

Value of Judgment, The . 

Trusts 

New Movement in Hu- 
manity, The .... 

Education for Life . . 

Immortality of Good 
Deeds, The .... 

New Patriotism, The 

Union Soldier, The . . 

Men : Made, Self-made, 
and Unmade . . . 

Battle of Santiago, The . 

Work and Play .... 

March of the Constitution, 
The 

Education and the Self- 
made Man 

Soldier Boy, The . . . 

Manly Fellow, A. . . . 

Daniel Webster .... 

Spanish Prisoners of War . 

" Forefathers' Day " . . 



Citizenship .... 
Reverence for the Flag 



Theodore Roosevelt ... I 

Hon. Albert J. Beveridge . 4 

Hon. John Hay .... 10 

Charles F. Thwing, D.D. 16 

Hon. J. B. Foraker ... 19 
William Jewett Tucker, 

LL.D. . 23 

Minot Judson Savage,D.D. 26 

Hon. Thomas Brackett Reed 33 

Richard Watson Gilder . 40 

Hon. John M. Thurston , 42 

E. G. Robinson, D.D., LL.D. 46 

Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge . 56 

Hamilton Wright Mabie . 58 

Andrew S. Draper, LL.D. 61 

Grover Cleveland . . . 66 

Hon. John Davis Long . 69 

Cyrus Northrop, LL.D. . 73 

Hon. George F. Hoar . . 75 

William Dean Howells . 78 
Arthur Twining Hadley, 

LL.D. 83 

Hon. Williajn P. Frye . . 89 

Gen. Horace Porter ... 92 



X 



CONTENTS. 



Hon. Elihu Root 105 



Art of Optimism, The . William De Witt Hyde, 

LL.D. 94 

New Era in Higher Edu- 
cation, The . . . James B. Angell, LL.D. . . 98 

Decoration Day . . . Hon. W. Bourke Cockran . 102 

Profit of the Laborer 
and Consumer, The . 

" Open Door " Policy 
in China, The . . . 

John Marshall . . . 

Uplifting of the Negro 
Race, The .... 

Last Address of Wil- 
liam McKinley, The 

Navy, The .... 

" Lest We Forget " . 

Piety and Civic Virtue. 



Hon. Cuskman K. Davis . 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 

Booker T. Washington . 



Admiral George Dewey . . 

David Starr Jordan, LL.D . 

Charles Henry Parkhurst, 

D.D. . 

Benjamin Harrison . . 

Henry Van Dyke, D.D., LL.D. 



Abraham Lincoln . . 
Commerce .... 
Our National Safe- 
guards Hon. Chauncey M. Depew 



Hon. John William Griggs. 
G. StanleyHall, LL.D. . . 



Clark Howell 



Social Discontent . . 

William McKinley . . 

Man With His Hat in 
His Hand, The . . 

Cure for Anarch- 
ism, The .... 

Expansion .... 

Uses of Education for 
Business .... 

Peacemakers of Blessed 

Memory .... Gen. Lew Wallace . . 

Keys to Success, The Edward William Bok . 

Equipment for Service Woodrow Wilson, LL.D 



Lyman Abbott, D.D. . . 
Hon. Henry L. Waiter son 



108 
no 

113 

118 
125 
127 

131 
134 
140 

143^ 
146^ 

150 

155 

158 
160 



Charles William Eliot, LL.D. 163 



169 
172 
177 



CONTENTS. XI 

World a Whispering Newell Dwight Hillis, 

Gallery, The .... D.D. . 179 

Growth : An Evidence Nicholas Murray Butler, 

of Education .... LL.D. 182 

Patriotism Hon. Charles Emory Smith 185 

Pursuit of Happi- 
ness, The Charles Dudley Warner . 1 87 

Combination of Capital 
and Consolidation of 
Labor Justice David J. Brewer . 189 

Flag, The Wallace Bruce . . . .191 

Modern Fiction .... Opie P. Read 194 

Recognize the Unions . M. W. Stryker, LL.D. . .197 

America a World Power Archbishop John Ireland . 202 

Competition Jacob Gould Schurman, . 

D.Sc, LL.D 206 

General Welfare, The . Hon. Whitelaw Reid . 209 ; 

National Unity and the 

State University . . Wm. L. Prather, LL,D. . 214 

Our Relations with the 

World Hon. Franklin MacVeagh 218 

Problem of the Philippines Hon. Henry M. Teller . . 222 

Genius and Character of 

Grant Hon. Clark E, Carr . . . 225 

Sovereignty Follows the 

Flag ...... George R. Peck 231 

The Conquerors . . . Hon. Cresswell MacLaughlin 234 

" Let Us Have Peace " Hon. Carl Schurz .... 238- 

Honor to the Patriot Spy Edward Everett Hale, D.D. 241 

Our Commercial Rela- 
tions Hon. Shelby Cullom . . . 244 

Dead upon the Field of Thomas Wentworth Hig- 
Honor ginson 246 

State Versus Anarchy, 

The L. Clark Seelye, D.D. , LL.D. 250 



Xll 



CONTENTS. 



What is Truth ? . . . 
New Century Greeting, 

Rufus Choate . . . . 

Commerce Clause of the 
Constitution and the 
Trusts, The . . . 

Phillips Brooks . . . 

Labor and Capital . . 

Retrospect of Oratory, 
A 



Henry S, Pritchett, LL.D. . 255 

Andrew Carnegie . . . .261 
Hon. Joseph H. Choate . . 262 



Hon. Philander C, Knox . 270 
James H. Baker, M.A., LL.D. 277 
Hon. Marcus A. Hanna , .282 

Lorenzo Sears 289 



INDEX OF AUTHORS. 



Abbott, Lyman 
Angell, James B, 

Baker, James H. 
Beveridge, Albert J. 
Bok, Edward William 
Brewer, David J. 
Bruce, Wallace 
Butler, Nicholas Murray 



Carnegie, Andrew 
Carr, Clark E. 
Choate, Joseph H. 
Cleveland, Grover 
Cockran, W T . Bourke 
Cullom, Shelby 

Davis, Cushman K. 
Depew, Chauncey M. 
Dewey, George 
Draper, Andrew S. 

Eliot, Charles William 

Foraker, J. B. 
Frye, William P. 



158 
98 

277 

4 
172 
189 
191 
182 

261 
225 
262 
66 
102 
244 

108 

143 
125 

61 
163 

19 
89 



XIV 



INDEX OF A UTHORS. 



Gilder, Richard Watson 
Griggs, John William 

Hadley, Arthur Twining 

Hale, Edward Everett 

Hall, G. Stanley 

Hanna, Marcus A. 

Harrison, Benjamin . 

Hay, John 

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth 

Hillis, Newell Dwight 

Hoar, George F. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. . 

Howell, Clark 

Howells, William Dean 

Hyde, William DeWitt 

Ireland, John 

Jordan, David Starr . 

Knox, Philander C. . 

Lodge, Henry Cabot. 
Long, John D. 

Mabie, Hamilton Wright 
MacLaughlin, Cresswell 
MacVeagh, Franklin . 
McKinley, William . 

Northrop, Cyrus 

Parkhurst, Charles Henrv» 



40 
146 

83 
241 
150 

282 

134 
10 

246 
179 

75 
no 

155 

78 
94 

202 
127 
270 

56 
69 

58 

234 
218 
118 

73 
131 



INDEX OF AUTHORS. 



XV 



Peck, George R. 
Porter, Horace 
Prather, William L. . 
Pritchett, Henry S. . 

Read, Opie P. 
Reed, Thomas Brackett 
Reid, Whitelaw 
Robinson, E. G. 
Roosevelt, Theodore 
Root, Elihu 

Savage, Minot Judson 
Schurman, Jacob Gould 
Schurz, Carl . 
Sears, Lorenzo 
Seelye, L. Clark 
Smith, Charles Emory 
Stryker, M. W. 

Teller, Henry M. 
Thurston, John M. . 
Thwing, Charles F. . 
Tucker, William Jewett 

Van Dyke, Henry 

Wallace, Lew 
Warner, Charles Dudley 
Washington, Booker T. 
Watterson, Henry L. 
Wilson, Woodrow 



PAGE. 

231 
92 

214 

255 
194 

33 
209 

46 

1 

105 

26 
206 
238 
289 
250 
185 
198 

222 
42 
16 
23 

140 

169 
187 

"3 

160 

177 



Cbe Best 

American Orations 
of To-Day 

Americanism-. 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

There are two or three things that American- 
ism means. In the first place it means that we 
shall give to our fellow-man, to our fellow-citizen, 
the same wide latitude as to his individual beliefs 
that we demand for ourselves ; that, so long as a 
man does his work as a man should, we shall not 
inquire, we shall not hold for or against him in 
civic life, his method of paying homage to his 
Maker. That is an important lesson for all of us 
to learn everywhere, but it is doubly important 
in our great cities, where we have a cosmopolitan 
population of such various origin, belonging to 
such different creeds, and where the problem of 
getting good government depends in its essence 
upon decent men standing together and insisting 
that before we take into account the ordinary 
political questions,we shall asapre-requisite, have 
decency and honesty in any party. 

Now for another side of Americanism ; the side 



2 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

of the work, the strife, of the active performance 
of duty; one side of Americanism, one side of 
democracy. Our democracy means that we have 
no privileged class, no class that is exempt from 
the duties or deprived of the privileges that are 
implied in the words " American citizenship." 
Now, that principle has two sides to it, itself, for 
all of us would be likely to dwell continually upon 
one side, that all have equal rights. It is more 
important that we should dwell on the other side ; 
that is, that we will have our duties and that the 
rights cannot be kept unless the duties are per- 
formed. 

The law of American life — of course it is the 
law of life everywhere — the law of American life, 
peculiarly, must be the law of work ; not the law 
of idleness ; not the law of self-indulgence or 
pleasure, merely the law of work. That may seem 
like a trite saying. Most true sayings are trite. It 
is a disgrace for any American not to do his duty, 
but it is a double, a triple disgrace for a man of 
means or a man of education not to do his duty. 
The only work worth doing is done by those men, 
those women, who learn not to shrink from diffi- 
culties, but to face them and overcome them. So 
that Americanism means work, means effort, 
means the constant and unending strife with our 
conditions, which is not only the law of nature, if 
the race is to progress, but which is really the law 
of the highest happiness for us ourselves. 



AMERICANISM. 3 

You have got to have the same interest in 
public affairs as in private affairs or you can not 
keep this country what this country should be. 
You have got to have more than that — you have 
got to have courage. I don't care how good a 
man is, if he is timid, his value is limited. The 
timid will not amount to very much in the world. 
I want to see a good man ready to smite with the 
sword. I want to see him able to hold his own 
in active life against the force of evil. I want to 
see him war effectively for righteousness. 

Of all the things we don't want to see is the 
tendency to divide into two camps ; on the one 
side all the nice, pleasant, refined people of high 
instincts, but no capacity to do work, and, on the 
other hand, men who have not got nice instincts 
at all, but who are not afraid. When you get 
that condition, you are preparing immeasurable 
disaster for the nation. You have got to com- 
bine decency and honesty with courage. But 
even that is not enough, for I don't care how 
brave, how honest a man is, if he is a natural-born 
fool he can not be a success. He has got to have 
the saving grace of common sense. He has got 
to have the right kind of heart, he has got to be 
upright and decent, he has got to be brave, and 
he has got to have common sense. He has got 
to have intelligence, and if he has these, then he 
has in him the making of a first-class American 
citizen. 



BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 



The Puritan Spirit. 

Hon. Albert J. Beveridge. 
Used by permission. 

The Puritan spirit is constructive. The new 
epoch in our national life will be constructive. 
The Puritan spirit never criticized except to pro- 
pose something better. It felled forests only to 
erect buildings. The word of immortality in 
Puritanism is the master-word " create." Build, 
build — this is the message of Puritanism to the 
American people in the new epoch of our nation- 
al life. 

This new epoch is caused by our new possess- 
ions, the new responsibilities they place upon us 
and the new powers they call into action. It is 
unavailing to argue that the recent change 
wrought on the map of the world ought never to 
have been made. The change has occurred. 
The Philippines are ours. Hawaii is ours. The 
Pacific is the American ocean. The Canal will 
be ours. Look at your map, and you will see 
that the Gulf is, in practical effect, an American 
lake. Our flag floats over the Antilles and has 
not yet been lowered even to the half-mast ; and 
when the Stars and Stripes is hauled down in 
Cuba, let it hang awhile at half-mast, in mourning 
for the people of Cuba abandoned and the duty 
of the United States deserted. These are epo- 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT. 5 

chal facts. The future of the world is in our 
hands. This is not enthusiasm ; it is geography. 

The constructive and righteous Puritan spirit 
must dominate this immense situation. We 
ought not to be merely imitative, any more 
than we ought to be corrupt. New circumstan- 
ces require new laws. It is not against these 
new laws that they are different in method, and 
even principle, from the old laws. New laws 
and new methods are not bad just because they 
are new. The important thing is that they shall 
fit the case. The Puritan was practical. If old 
forms and ancient principles did not apply to 
actual conditions, he developed principles and 
devised forms that did. Thus in our new epoch 
it is not helpful to complain of unalterable facts 
and declare that we cannot deal with them be- 
cause the old methods do not fit them. There is 
nothing so narrow as the egotism of precedent. 

Let us be specific. The Philippine people are 
to be governed. We can govern them best by 
considering them as they are. We cannot deal 
with them as we would with New Englanders. 
We must not ignore differences of location, con- 
dition, climate, race. With all our new domin- 
ions, we must deal as facts demand. A common 
code for the Malay Archipelago, the Hawaiian 
Islands and our possessions in the Gulf, and that 
code the method devised for our American 
peopled territories, would be unsatisfactory to 



6 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

them and to us. To govern them by a method 
not appropriate to them, merely because we 
have used such methods heretofore, is not Puri- 
tan but Chinese reasoning. We must have the 
adaptability of common sense. The Puritan was 
the greatest maker of precedents the world has 
ever seen. And to make a precedent when need- 
ed is as noble as to follow a precedent when 
proper. Construction is the office of our epoch, 
and therefore we invoke the creative spirit of the 
Puritan. 

Our Constitution does not prohibit this. It 
says : " Congress shall have power to dispose of, 
and make all needful rules and regulations re- 
specting territory and other property belonging 
to the United States." Even if this present 
development were not dreamed of when the Con- 
stitution was framed, that ordinance of national 
life still authorizes it. For the Constitution 
grows as the people grow. Otherwise, the 
people would have to stop growing or the 
Constitution would have to be destroyed. 
Neither is necessary. The Constitution is not a 
contract of purchase and sale, or a deed, or a life 
insurance policy. It is an ordinance of national 
life. Let us thank God for a Hamilton and a 
Marshall. The Constitution was made for the 
American people, not the American people for 
the Constitution. The Constitution does not 
give immortality to the nation ; the nation gives 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT. 7 

immortality to the Constitution. The saying 
that " Our Constitution follows the flag," is 
only partly true. The whole truth is this : Our 
institutions follow the flag. Our Constitution is 
only one of our institutions. Our Constitution 
did not give us our institutions ; our institutions 
gave us our Constitution. Our institutions 
follow the flag — the simplest first, later the more 
complex, and finally, when the way is prepared, 
our noblest institution, the American Constitu- 
tion, follows the flag. Free schools, equal laws, 
impartial justice, social order, and at last, when 
these have done their work and our wards are 
ready to understand and rightly use it, our Con- 
stitution, which is our method of government, 
follows the flag. " First the blade, then the ear, 
then the full corn in the ear." Our flag, our 
institutions, our Constitution. The American 
Consitution follows the flag when the American 
people deem it best ; and the American people 
may be trusted. 

The Puritan insisted upon settling his own 
questions in his own way, and he knew what his 
own questions were. He had the logic of geog- 
raphy, and we, his children, must have it too. 
Any canal which joins the American Pacific to 
the American Gulf must, therefore, be itself 
American. The Antilles are the major promise ; 
the Philippines and Hawaiis are the minor prom- 
ise •, all Central American and Isthmian canals 



8 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

finish that syllogism. The Puritan had that 
independence which consists in self-dependence 
in his own affairs. Apply this to present facts. 
The Philippine question is an American ques- 
tion ; the American nation must work it out ; we 
cannot permit a concert of Powers in solving it. 
The Cuban question is an American question ; 
the American nation must work it out ; we can- 
not permit a concert of Powers in solving it. 
All Atlantic and Pacific canals and the future of 
Central America, so far as affected thereby, are 
American questions ; we cannot permit a concert 
of Powers in solving them. This sentiment is 
not anti-foreign ; it is only pro-American. Inter- 
national respect is based on respective national 
strength as well as on justice. Remember that 
the figure of Justice always bears a sword. Ge- 
ography and interest, not altruism, are the basis 
of fundamental national rights. 

All this means construction, and construction 
involves the probability of occasional mistakes. 
But this will not give us pause. The Puritan 
spirit was great enough to risk the making of 
mistakes. Progress is built on mistakes. The 
most men do is imperfect, but the best remains. 
The sovereign duty is to do. The only irre- 
trievable mistake is to do nothing. Let us have 
the courage of effort, even though we err. 

But the Puritan was conservative as well as 
constructive. He considered the things that are, 



THE PURITAN SPIRIT. 9 

how he might safely build upon them. He was 
never rash. His courage was intelligent. Con- 
servatism and construction are what we need. 
Do-nothing statesmanship is fatal ; slap-dash 
statesmanship is fatal, too. Both are non-Puritan 
and un-American. Constructive conservatism, 
cautious daring, active moderation, a progress 
that is sane, these are the qualities we must have 
in the new epoch in our national life ; and these 
are the qualities which, combined, men call the 
Puritan spirit. 

In carrying out this programme of construction 
the stern spirit of Puritan honesty must rule. 
Not exploitation, but development ; not waste, 
but growth. Develop, build, cultivate, create. 
No robbing, no looting, no piracies in the name 
of commerce ! This epoch must go down to 
history as the noblest effort of Puritan construct- 
iveness. We can not run away from these 
tasks. Where the Puritan landed he remained. 
The Puritan spirit has never known retreat. We 
will not be cowards, any more than we will be 
robbers. 

Let no man fear because the Constitution gives 
the American people a free hand to do this 
giant's work. Let no man fear because our 
treaties and our foreign relations shall be so ar- 
ranged that the American people shall have a 
clean future in which to do this work. The 
motto of Americanism henceforth must be : A 



IO BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

clean future and a free hand. Let us trust pos- 
terity as much as we revere ancestry. Other- 
wise, we discredit both. America is to-day the 
young man of the nations, eager for his work, 
and with that work waiting to be done. We will 
not tie his hands. We will not bind his future. 
Mr. President, I propose this sentiment : " Amer- 
ica, the young man of the Nations, the proudest 
development of the Puritan spirit. Give him a 
clean future and a free hand, and he will make of 
this new epoch the beginning of mankind's 
golden age." 



Our Recent Diplomacy. 

Hon. John Hay. 
Abridged. Used by permission. 

There was a time when diplomacy was a 
science of intrigue and falsehood, of traps and 
mines and countermines. The word " Machia- 
velic " has become an adjective in our common 
speech, signifying fraudulent craft and guile ; but 
Machiavel was as honest a man as his time justi- 
fied or required. The King of Spain wrote to 
the King of France after the massacre of St. 
Bartholomew congratulating him upon the 
splendid dissimulation with which that stroke of 
policy had been accomplished. In the last gen- 
eration it was thought a remarkable advance in 



UR RE CENT DIPL OMA CY. II 

straightforward diplomacy when Prince Bismarck 
recognized the advantage of telling the truth, 
even at the risk of misleading his adversary. 
We have generally told squarely what we wanted, 
announced early in negotiation what we were 
willing to give, and allowed the other side to 
accept or reject our terms. We have been met 
by the representatives of other powers in the 
same spirit of frankness and sincerity. There is 
nothing like straightforwardness to beget its like. 

The comparative simplicity of our diplomatic 
methods would be a matter of necessity if it 
were not of choice. Secret treaties, reserved 
clauses, private understandings, are impossible 
to us. No treaty has any validity until ratified 
by the Senate ; many require the action of both 
Houses of Congress to be carried into effect. 
They must, therefore, be in harmony with public 
opinion. The Executive could not change this 
system, even if he should ever desire to. It 
must be accepted, with all its difficulties and all 
its advantages ; and it has been approved by the 
experience of a hundred years. 

As to the measure of success which our recent 
diplomacy has met with, it is difficult, if not im- 
possible, for me to speak. There are two impor- 
tant lines of human endeavor in which men are 
forbidden even to allude to their success — affairs 
of the heart and diplomatic affairs. In doing so, 
one not only commits a vulgarity which tran- 



12 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

scends all question of taste, but makes all future 
success impossible. For this reason, the diploma- 
tic representatives of the Government must fre- 
quently suffer in silence the most outrageous 
imputations upon their patriotism, their intelli- 
gence, and their common honesty. To justify 
themselves before the public, they would some- 
times have to place in jeopardy the interests of 
the nation. They must constantly adopt for 
themselves the motto of the French revolutionist, 
" Let my name wither, rather than my country 
be injured." 

But if we are not permitted to boast of what 
we have done, we can at least say a word about 
what we have tried to do, and the principles 
which have guided our action. The briefest ex- 
pression of our rule of conduct is, perhaps, the 
Monroe Doctrine and the Golden Rule. With 
this simple chart we can hardly go far wrong. 

I think I may say that our sister republics to 
the south of us are perfectly convinced of the 
sincerity of our attitude. They know we desire 
the prosperity of each of them, and peace and 
harmony among them. We no more want their 
territory than we covet the mountains of the 
moon. We are grieved and distressed when 
there are differences among them, but even then 
we should never think of trying to compose any 
of those differences unless by the request of both 
parties to it. Not even our earnest desire for 



O UR RE CENT DIPL OMACY. 1 3 

peace among them will lead us to any action 
which might offend their national dignity or 
their just sense of independence. We owe them 
all the consideration which we claim for ourselves. 
To critics in various climates who have other 
views of our purposes we can only wish fuller 
information and more quiet consciences. 

As to what we have tried to do — what we are 
still trying to do — in the general field of diplo- 
macy, there is no reason for doubt on the one 
hand or reticence on the other. President Mc- 
Kinley in his messages during the last four years 
has made the subject perfectly clear. We have 
striven, on the lines laid down by Washington, 
to cultivate friendly relations with all powers, 
but not to take part in the formation of groups 
or combinations among them. A position of 
complete independence is not incompatible with 
relations involving not friendship alone, but con- 
current action as well in important emergencies. 
We have kept always in view the fact that we 
are preeminently a peace-loving people ; that 
our normal activities are in the direction of 
trade and commerce ; that the vast development 
of our industries imperatively demands that we 
shall not only retain and confirm our hold on 
our present markets, but seek constantly, by all 
honorable means, to extend our commercial in- 
terests in every practicable direction. It is for 
this reason we have negotiated the treaties of 



14 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OE TO-DA Y. 

reciprocity which now await the action of the 
Senate ; all of them conceived in the traditional 
American spirit of protection to our own indus- 
tries, and yet mutually advantageous to ourselves 
and our neighbors. In the same spirit we have 
sought, successfully, to induce all the great 
powers to unite in a recognition of the general 
principle of equality of commercial access and 
opportunity in the markets of the Orient. We 
believe that "a fair field and no favor" is all we 
require ; and with less than that we can not be 
satisfied. If we accept the assurances we have re- 
ceived as honest and genuine, as I certainly do, 
that equality will not be denied us ; and the re- 
sult may safely be left to American genius and 
energy. 

We consider our interests in the Pacific Ocean 
as great now as those of any other power, and 
destined to indefinite development. We have 
opened our doors to the people of Hawaii ; we 
have accepted the responsibility of the Philip- 
pines which Providence imposed upon us ; we 
have put an end to the embarrassing con- 
dominium in which we were involved in Samoa, 
and while abandoning none of our commercial 
rights in the entire group, we have established 
our flag and our authority in Tutuila, which 
gives us the finest harbor in the South Seas. 
Next in order will come a Pacific cable, and an 
Isthmian canal for the use of all well-disposed 



O UR RE CENT DIPL OMA CY. I 5 

peoples, but under exclusive ownership and 
American control — of both of which great enter- 
prises President McKinley and President Roose- 
velt have been the energetic and consistent 
champions. 

Sure as we are of our rights in these matters, 
convinced as we are of the authenticity of the 
vision which has led us thus far and still beckons 
us forward, I can yet assure you that so long as 
the administration of your affairs remains in 
hands as strong and skillful as those to which 
they have been and are now confided, there will 
be no more surrender of our rights than there 
will be violation of the rights of others. The 
President, to whom you have given your invalu- 
able trust and confidence, like his now immortal 
predecessor, is as incapable of bullying a strong 
power as he is of wronging a weak one. He 
feels and knows — for has he not tested it, in the 
currents of the heady fight, as well as in the toil- 
some work of administration ? — that the nation 
over whose destinies he presides has a giant's 
strength in the works of war, as in the works of 
peace. But that consciousness of strength brings 
with it no temptation to do injury to any power 
on earth, the proudest or the humblest. We 
frankly confess we seek the friendship of all the 
powers ; we want to trade with all peoples ; we 
are conscious of resources that will make our 
commerce a source of advantage to them and of 



1 6 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

profit to ourselves. But no wantonness of strength 
will ever induce us to drive a hard bargain with 
another nation because it is weak, nor will any 
fear of ignoble criticism tempt us to insult or 
defy a great power because it is strong, or even 
because it is friendly. 

The attitude of our diplomacy may be indi- 
cated in a text of Scripture which Franklin — the 
first and greatest of our diplomats — tells us 
passed through his mind when he was presented 
at the Court of Versailles. It was a text his 
father used to quote to him in the old candle 
shop in Boston, when he was a boy : " Seest thou 
a man diligent in his business, he shall stand be- 
fore kings." Let us be diligent in our business 
and we shall stand — stand, you see, not crawl, 
nor swagger — stand, as a friend and equal, asking 
nothing, putting up with nothing but what is 
right and just, among our peers, in the great 
democracy of nations. 



The Value of Judgment. 

Charles F. Thwing, D.D. 

President of Western Reserve University. Arranged for 
this book by the author. 

Judgment is the application of the trained 
intellect to human lives. It is the power to see, 
to appreciate, and to use the truth in improving 
the condition of mankind. This element is, in 



THE VALUE OF JUDGMENT. 1 7 

my thinking, the great one contributed by the 
college graduate to human life. This judgment 
embodies largeness and a proper estimate of 
values, the power to see units and out of units 
to construct unities. It embraces every scientific 
application of observation and every philosophi- 
cal application of inference. It is a judgment 
deliberate and deliberative, sane, large, as remote 
from being influenced by the idols of the market 
place, of the forum and of the voting booth 
as it is remote from the smallness of dilet- 
tanteism. It works with accuracy of instru- 
ments of precision. It moves in inductions 
that are no less than transcendental. It unites 
faith and rationalism, making faith reasonable 
and rationalism ethical. It extracts the truth 
of optimism without relieving us of the sense of 
responsibility and it draws out the truth of 
pessimism without urging on to the pessimist's 
fate. It is a judgment which helps one to 
see the principal as principal and the subor- 
dinate as subordinate. It is a judgment which 
gives contentment and inspiration, humility and 
the sense of strength. It is a judgment which 
results in adjustment, making one a citizen of 
the world without making one less a patriot. 
It is a judgment, too, which means self-under- 
standing and the understanding of all. It is 
a judgment primarily intellectual and yet it is 
not simply intellectual. It is a judgment in 



\ 



1 8 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

which the emotions have a proper play and 
place and yet it is not simply emotional. It 
is a judgment resulting in action, yet it is some- 
thing more by far than mere volition. It is a 
judgment in which conscience has a supreme 
part, but it represents more than a dictate of 
conscience narrowly interpreted. Such a judg- 
ment a college graduate above other members 
of the community is fitted to offer and to use. 
Each study of a college makes an offering to 
its enrichment. Language gives to it discrimi- 
nation, freedom and amplitude, science gives to 
it the sense of order and a respect for law, 
philosophy gives to it self-confidence, breadth 
of vision, toleration. The old college trained 
men of judgment. Somecimes we ask the differ- 
ence between the college man of to-day and 
the college man of fifty years ago. The grad- 
uate of to-day is possessed of scholarship more 
ample, more varied, of manners more gracious, 
but it is an open question whether the old 
college did not train men in judgment quite 
as efficiently as the modern college. It, this 
power of judgment, is more useful than the 
application of beauty. It is the basis of social 
life and good manners. It is the soul of con- 
duct. It is the crown of intellectual manhood 
and womanhood. It is an essential element in 
individual character. It is the queen in civilized 
society. 



TRUSTS. 19 

Trusts. 

Hon. J. B. Foraker. ' 

Abridged. Contributed by the author. 

TRUSTS did not originate here, as a result of 
the tariff, but in England and European countries 
where they have free trade, and where they had 
trusts of every character long before they became 
common in America, and where to-day they are 
more numerous than they are in the United 
States. In the next place, what are to-day called 
trusts are generally nothing more than large cor- 
porations engaged, as a rule, in perfectly legiti- 
mate business, and as such they are but a natural 
evolution of modern industrial conditions. They 
exist because there is a demand for them ; not a 
political, but a business demand. 

We have reached the point in our industrial 
and commercial development where we are able 
to supply all our home markets and have a large 
surplus besides. This surplus must be sold ; if 
not at home, then abroad. If it can not be sold 
it will not long be produced. If not produced, 
then not only must our output be curtailed, but 
the pay-roll must be cut down. If the pay-roll is 
cut down, not only the wage-worker suffers, but 
the home market is correspondingly restricted and 
the farmer suffers a consequent falling off in the 



20 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO- DA V. 

demand for his products. There is trouble all 
along the line. 

Considerations of this character show that we 
must not restrict production, but must find addi- 
tional markets. To find additional markets means 
that we must successfully compete with foreign 
countries. To do that we must manufacture at 
less cost, not only that we may undersell, but that 
we may have a margin for the transportation and 
exploitation of our goods and wares. 

To do this we must economize. There are 
many ways to do that. One is to reduce wages, 
and thus lessen the cost of manufacture. A 
poor method that, and one we are unalterably 
opposed to. 

Another way to economize is by consolidation. 
This has objectionable features, but they are far 
less objectionable than the reduction of wages. 

By consolidating many establishments into one 
you make a large capital and create a concentrated 
power of money, which, in the hands of unscru- 
pulous men, may be used to the injury of the 
public welfare. Because there may be this im- 
proper use it is appropriate to so legislate as to 
prevent it, just as we legislate to prevent too 
great a speed in the running of railroad trains, 
street cars, and automobiles, or to prevent the 
great dangers to property and life that attend 
the use of electric current, gunpowder and dyna- 
mite ; but, as no one would think of prohibiting 



TRUSTS. 21 

or destroying railroads, or street cars, or auto- 
mobiles, or electric light and power plants, or gun 
powder or dynamite, by legislation, so too, no one 
who has any sense would think of so legislating 
as to prohibit or destroy large combinations of 
capital necessary for the conduct of legitimate 
enterprises. 

They have become a feature of modern business 
conditions the world over, and in consequence, 
they are a special necessity here, in the United 
States, where we are compelled to invade and 
capture foreign markets or slacken the pace at 
which we are going in the employment of labor 
and the development of our resources. We to- 
day have in our favor the largest balance of trade 
ever known since the beginning of history. We 
have in our vaults the largest amount of gold 
ever possessed by any government or any people. 
We stand at the head of all nations in wealth 
and credit. 

It would be strange, indeed, if with such ad- 
vantages there did not at the same time come 
some disadvantages. All great evolutions and 
changes are likely to work some injury as well as 
good. So it is with the changes now being 
wrought. Consolidation involves more or less of 
displacement and rearrangement. There must 
be more or less change of occupation for those 
who are employed, and more or less of abandon- 
ment of what has been in use because of the 



22 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

substitution of something better ; but this is 
only history repeating itself. The cotton gin, 
the sewing machine, the typewriter, the use of 
steam and the electric current, all alike worked 
similar results ; but who would retrace these 
steps of progress on that account ? 

It has been only a few years, since to travel 
from the Mississippi to New York involved the 
use of separate lines of railroad, each under a 
different management, with repeated change of 
cars and other similar inconveniences. That 
was the day of small things, when we had no 
giant corporations with continuous lines span- 
ning the continent ; but who would go back to 
that day and that condition ? 

It has been one of the marvels of this marvel- 
ous age how, by the consolidation of one line 
after another, great systems of railroads have 
been formed and put into successful operation, 
and at the same time the comforts of travel and 
facilities for freight transportation have been 
constantly and voluntarily increased, while the 
charges therefor have been as constantly dimin- 
ished, until we have at the hands of these great 
corporations not that tyranny, oppression and 
deprivation of liberty, of which we hear so much, 
but, on the contrary, the best, the most accom- 
modating and the cheapest service to be found 
anywhere in the civilized world. 

There are to-day more railroads in this country 



THE NEW MOVEMENT IN HUMANITY. 23 

than ever before. More money is invested in 
them than ever before. They employ more 
men than ever before ; they pay higher wages 
than ever before ; and at the same time they 
charge less for the services they render to the 
public than ever before. 

The net aggregate result has been one of great 
general benefit ; and as it is and has been with the 
railroads so too it is, and will be, with these 
great industrial combinations. 

They are born of our conditions. They have 
come to meet imperative requirements. They 
have been attended by many abuses. There 
will doubtless be many more ; but time, exper- 
ience, sound business judgment, and healthy 
public sentiment will correct most of them. 
There will be but little left for the law to do, and 
that little will not be difficult. 



The New Movement In Humanity. 

William Jewett Tucker, L L.D. 
President of Dartmouth College. Contributed by the author. 

At such a time as this who can over-estimate 
the joy, not only of the active, but also of the 
reflective life ? To live consciously, intelligently, 



24 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

expectantly, with the seeing eye, the open heart, 
the loyal faith, — this is life indeed. We are 
not 

" Wandering between two worlds, one dead, 
The other powerless to be born." 

The world we are leaving behind us is still vital 
with the divine impulse. The world which lies 
about us is beginning to reveal and execute the 
larger plans of God. No, we are not "wander- 
ing," nor simply under directed motion. The 
significance of our time is that in and through it 
there is a change of movement. It is as if one 
could now see the workings of the unseen power 
shifting the forces that make history, that shape 
the destiny of men and nations. Such, in part, 
is the advantage of the intellectual life in an age 
of transition. 

But deeper than the knowledge we may gain 
at such a time of the transfer or exchange of 
ruling principles and ideas is the satisfaction of 
watching the application of the new ideas to the 
new needs of the world. We are apt to place 
too much dependence upon men in times of need. 
We say that the emergency calls for the man, 
and must wait his coming. Not so. It is the 
sufficient idea which delivers and saves. It is 
great working ideas which make great men pos- 
sible," which may make them unnecessary. 
What man is the equivalent of the new conception 



THE NE W MO VEMENT IN HUMANITY. 2 5 

of humanity which is now at work reconstructing 
society, governments, the church ? 

And as one extends his view, watching the 
application of new ideas to the needs of the 
world, he may see the somewhat singular phe- 
nomenon of the old serving under the new. We 
are impressed with the transfer of working 
power from liberty to unity. But the change is 
after all local, confined as yet to the few advanced 
peoples. There are those for whom liberty has 
not yet wrought her necessary work. How shall 
this be done ? As it has been done ? Not at all. 
No other nation can repeat the experience of the 
Republic. The days of solitary struggle for 
liberty are over. The nation which fights to-day 
for freedom fights in the fellowship of the nations 
which are free. The spirit of unity is abroad, 
everywhere supporting, guiding, cheering the be- 
lated spirit of liberty. 

But why should one at such a time content 
himself, in the joy of the intellectual life, with the 
reflective, or even, expectant attitude ? In this 
movement from liberty to unity, who would not 
surrender himself to it, and become a part of it ? 
The appeal of liberty was to men of action. The 
appeal of unity is to men of thought. The figure 
of the scholar on the field of battle was always 
inspiring, but he was seldom a leader there. In 
the new fields of service the scholar leads the 
way. The spirit of unity cannot be served as the 



26 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

spirit of liberty was served, except in regard to a 
like consecration. The new kingdom of heaven 
may not suffer violence ; the violent will not take 
it by force. The social unity must come through 
patient study, wise invention, identification with 
men, sympathy, and sacrifice ; force will have no 
part in its accomplishment. 

The immediate future in the service of human- 
ity belongs to those who are best able to discern 
its real wants, who feel most its deepest yearn- 
ings, and who, above all, believe sublimely in 
that conception of humanity which can alone 
satisfy and help. The path of human progress 
is marked by the succession of saving principles 
and ideas, and each generation treads that path 
with certain step, as it hails its own idea, then 
summons its chosen ones, and bids them guard 
and serve it in loyalty and faith. 



Education for Life. 

Minot Judson Savage, D.D. 
Abridged. Contributed by the author. 

There is a very important distinction between 
education and learning. A great many people 
who know something think they are educated. 
They may be; but, because they know it, it does 



EDUCA TION FOR LIFE. 2J 

not necessarily follow that they are educated, 
and this no matter what they know or how 
much. For there is a radical distinction between 
education and learning. 

A man is educated who is trained in all his 
faculties and powers to the best, who has become 
master of himself and of his conditions. Now 
learning may or may not have much to do with 
that. Lincoln was not a learned man. He knew 
no language but his own. He had a very slight 
acquaintance with the world's literature, only a 
general outline knowledge of the world's history. 
He had never studied music. Probably he had 
carried mathematics only a very little way. Art 
— all these things were practically closed avenues 
to him. But would anybody to-day think of 
speaking of Lincoln as uneducated ? 

Washington was not a learned man. It has 
been discovered by some of his recent biograph- 
ers, who are anxious lest we should over-idealize 
him, and who are taking pains, therefore, to tell 
us about the real George Washington, that he 
did not even know how to spell. Many of his 
latest State papers contained errors in orthog- 
raphy that a small boy possibly might escape. 
He knew no language but his own. All the 
great avenues of the world's investigation, liter- 
rary, scientific, artistic, he had not entered. But 
was Washington an uneducated man ? 

Turn now the other side for a moment, and 



28 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

see, so that the matter may become perfectly 
clear. A man may devote his life to the study 
of literature, until English literature, French, 
German, Greek, — all the great literatures of the 
world, — are familiar to him. Would he there- 
fore be educated ? He might be utterly help- 
less in dealing with the practical problems of 
life. He might be entirely ignorant of the great, 
pressing problems of this present century that 
every educated man is called on to deal with at 
every turn. 

Now, to carry the definition a little further, 
what is education ? Education is such a devel- 
opment of our faculties and powers as enables us 
to be masters wherever we are placed — masters 
of ourselves, masters of our condition. And we 
need, incidentally, to know enough to know 
where we are and what we are there for. There 
is where the knowledge comes in. Education 
for this century, for example, might have been 
utterly worthless for the seventeenth century, 
because the conditions, social, political, industrial, 
moral and religious, were entirely different then 
from what they are now. An educated man in 
the seventeenth century might be powerless to 
deal in any practical or effective way with the 
great problems of the present century. 

The most important thing of all for every 
young man at the outset — and every young 
woman as well, it may be, — this present century, 



EDUCATION FOR LIFE. 29 

is that he should be so trained that, drop him 
wherever you will in the world, he can earn an 
honest living. That is the foundation, only. 
Yes. The foundation, however, is, in one way 
of looking at it, the most important part of any 
structure. 

Then another point in regard to which young 
men and women ought to be educated. Young 
men and women both ought to be taught the 
history of government and the peculiar principles 
of this government, so that they may be fitted 
to play their parts as citizens. For next to 
earning an honest living, and next to understand- 
ing the distinction between right and wrong, — 
so that, if a man chooses to do wrong he does it 
with his eyes open, — is what one's attitude shall 
be as a citizen. 

We do not know whether the time will come 
when women will vote. That is a matter too 
large to touch on now. But the time has come 
when women are a power, and a tremendous 
power, in the political life of the time, — a power 
hardly second to that which is excercised by 
men. One of our greatest troubles is ignorance 
of the past history of the world. The most dif- 
ficult problem the human race has ever set itself 
is the achievement of a government which com- 
bines liberty and order. 

We have achieved it here in this country more 
completely than it has ever been done before in 



30 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OE TO-DAY. 

the history of the world. And the people who 
come here from other countries need to learn 
before they are permitted to use the power of 
the ballot what the peculiar conditions are here, 
what American citizenship means. And our 
young men and women — living in wealthy circles, 
in high social conditions — need to be reminded 
as to how recent this achievement is, need to be 
reminded what a price of agelong effort, of im- 
prisonment, of torture, of death, has been paid 
for that which they treat so lightly. 

No man is fit to live a human life until he ap- 
preciates the position he occupies as a citizen, 
and has made a careful study of the principles 
involved in this position, so that he may acquit 
himself as a man, who at the same time is one of 
the rulers of his city and of his native land. 

There is another phase of education that is 
needed at the present time. One of the princi- 
pal problems of this age is the relation between 
money and labor. In other words, a properly 
educated young man ought to know something 
of the history of the industrial problems of man- 
kind. One great difficulty to-day is that we are 
having new theories presented to us, new socie- 
ties formed, new organizations entered upon in 
every direction, in order to achieve certain things 
which only reveal the ignorance of the people 
who are interested in them. Over and over 
again you will find some association, club, society, 



EDUCATION FOR LIFE. 3 1 

trying to get people to adopt some idea which 
has been tried and tried and exploded and 
exploded a dozen times in the history of the 
world ; only they do not know it. 

There are certain roads, it is said, which, if you 
follow them, will lead you over the fence through 
the pasture, then into the woods, then along a 
squirrel track, and up a tree. A good many of 
the pathways which the reformers, speculators, 
and enthusiasts of this modern world are trying 
to lead us in are of this kind. 

If you wish to place yourself so that you 
know where you stand in the pathway of the 
world's industrial progress, so that you can help 
on that which is of promise and discourage that 
which has no promise, then you must be educated 
concerning what humanity has tried to do, with 
its success and its failure along the industrial 
line. In spite of anything that an individual 
attempts to do, there is some great power that is 
holding this world in its hand : there is a Force 
greater than kings, greater than prime ministers, 
greater than philosophers or scientists, — there is 
a Force at work ; and humanity, under the im- 
pulse of that Force, is moving along certain lines 
in certain definite directions. 

The thing for us as earnest, intelligent young 
men and women to do is to know enough of the 
past and enough of the present so that we can 
find out which way the world, industrially, is 



X 



32 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

going. Suppose we pit ourselves against the Force 
that is manifested in the universe : we only waste 
our effort. What we need to do is to chime in, 
to co-operate with this eternal Power that makes 
for a higher and better human state of affairs. 

Side with truth before it is popular to side 
with it. Side with God and humanity and hu- 
man hope just as fast as you can see what is best 
for humanity, what promises the most for human 
hope. Be fully persuaded in your own mind. 
Do not drift.' It is not worthy of a man to drift. 
It is not worthy of a man to be governed merely 
by social considerations, to go to church because 
he thinks it will help him in a business way, 
because it opens some doors to homes of wealth 
and affluence that he might not otherwise find it 
easy to enter. A man ought to have a convic- 
tion. And what is a conviction ? A conviction 
is something of which you have become con- 
vinced. It means a little thought, a little study, 
going over the ground and making up your mind. 
Most people have only opinions, notions, im- 
pressions, impulses. The number of people who 
have convictions is comparatively small. 

As you face the great problems, then, of the 
march of God, leading humanity up the ages, the 
great problem of the religious life of the world, 
the promise of the future, have some convictions 
about it. Take your place, bear your burden, 
and do your work like a man. 



THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD DEEDS. 33 

The man who is educated for life, then, is one 
who brings his whole life up into relation to 
these high human ranges of thought, feeling, and 
action ; one who is trained so that he can master 
himself and his condition ; one who is learned 
enough to know where he is in the world's move- 
ment and what needs to be done next ; one who 
consecrates himself to the highest, so that he is 
not content to be anything else but the best ; 
one who appreciates the fact that he owes all 
that he possesses to this struggling humanity of 
which he is a part, and so stands ready to pay 
back to humanity in service what it has given 
him by inheritance. 

The man who, thus trained to the highest 
things he can conceive of, who has made the 
most of himself and then who is ready to give 
himself for the world, — he who has reached this 
position has found education for life. 



The Immortality of Good Deeds. 

Hon. Thomas Brackett Reed. 
Late Speaker of the House of Representatives. 

Six hundred and fifty or seventy years ago, 
England, which, during the following period of 
nearly seven centuries, has been the richest nation 
on the face of the globe, began to establish the 
two great universities which, from the banks of 



34 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

the Cam and the Isis, have sent forth great 
scholars and priests and statesmen whose deeds 
have been part of the history of every land and 
sea. During all that long period reaching back 
two hundred and fifty years before it was even 
dreamed that this great hemisphere existed, be- 
fore the world knew that it was swinging in the 
air and rolling about the sun, kings and cardinals, 
nobles and great churchmen, the learned and the 
pious, began bestowing upon those abodes of 
scholars their gifts of land and money ; and they 
have continued their benefactions down to our 
time. What those universities, with all their 
colleges and halls teeming with scholars for six 
hundred years, have done for the progress of 
civilization and the good of man I could not be- 
gin to tell. 

Although more than six centuries of regal, 
princely, and pious donations have been poured 
into the purses of these venerable aids to learn- 
ing, the munificence of one American citizen to- 
day affords an endowment income equal to that 
of each university, and when Time has done his 
perfect work, Stephen Girard, mariner and mer- 
chant, may be found to have come nearer immor- 
tality than the long procession of kings and car- 
dinals, nobles and statesmen, whose power was 
mighty in their own days, but who are only on 
their way to oblivion. 

Unity and progress are the watchwords of 



THE IMMOR TALITY OF GOOD DEEDS. 3 5 

Divine guidance, and every great event, or series 
of events, has been for the good of the race. 
Were this the proper time, I could show that 
wars — and wars ought to be banished forever 
from the face of the earth ; that pestilences — and 
the time is coming when they will be no more ; 
that persecutions and inquisitions — and liberty 
of thought is the richest pearl of life, — that all 
these things — wars, pestilences, and persecutions 
— were but helps to the unity of mankind. All 
things, including our own natures, bind us to- 
gether for deep and unrelenting purposes. It 
has been wisely ordained that no set of creatures 
of our race shall be beyond the reach of others, — 
so lofty that they will not fear reproach. If the 
lofty and the learned do not lift us up, we drag 
them down. But unity is not the only watch- 
word ; there must be progress also. Since by a 
law we cannot evade we are to keep together 
and since we are to progress, we must do it to- 
gether, and nobody must be left behind. This is 
not a matter of philosophy ; it is a matter of fact. 
No progress which did not lift all, ever lifted 
any. If we let the poison of filthy diseases 
percolate through the hovels of the poor, Death 
knocks at the palace gates. If we leave to the 
greater horror of ignorance any portion of our 
race, the consequences of ignorance strike us all, 
and there is no escape. We must all move, but 
we must all keep together. It is only when the 



36 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

rear-guard comes up that the van-guard can go 
on. 

Stephen Girard must have understood this. 
He took under his charge the progress of those 
who needed his aid, knowing that if they were 
added to the list of good citizens, to the catalogue 
of moral, enterprising, and useful men, there was 
so much added, not to their happiness only, but 
to the welfare of the race to which he belonged. 
For his orphans the van-guard need not wait. 
He also understood what education was. Most 
men, brought up as he was on shipboard and on 
shore, with few books and fewer studies, if they 
cared for learning at all, would have had for 
learning an uncouth reverence, such as the savage 
has for his idol, a reverence for the fancied mag- 
nificence of the unknown. This would have led 
him to establish a university devoted to out-of- 
the-way learning far beyond his ken, or to link 
his name to glories to which he could not aspire. 
But the man who named his vessels after the 
great French authors of his age, and who read 
their works himself, knew from them, and from 
his own laborious and successful life, that book 
learning was not all of education, and so gave his 
orphans an entrance into a practical world with 
such learning as left the whole field of learning 
before them, if they wanted it, with power to 
make fortunes besides. 

Stephen Girard was the greatest merchant of 



THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD DEEDS. $7 

his time, with the noblest ambition of them all. 
He was so resolute in his pursuit of wealth, and 
so coldly determined in all his endeavors, that 
he seems to have uncovered to few or to none 
the generous purpose of his heart. " My actions, 
must make my life," he said, and of his life not 
one moment was wasted. " Facts and things 
rather than words and signs " were the warp and 
woof of his existence. No wonder he left the 
injunction that this should be the teaching of 
those objects of his bounty into whose faces he 
was never to look. 

The vast wealth which Girard had was of itself 
alone evidence of greatness. Fortunes may be 
made and lost. Fortunes may be inherited. 
These things mean nothing. But the fortune 
which endowed Girard College was made and 
firmly held in a hand of eighty years. That 
meant greatness. But when the dead hand 
opens and pours the rich bloom of a preparation 
for life over six thousand boys in the half cen- 
tury which has gone and thousands in centuries to 
come, that means more than greatness. Mr. 
Girard gave more than his money. He put into 
his enterprise his own powerful brain, and, like 
the ships he sent to sea, long after his death the 
adventure came home laden, not with the results 
of his capital alone, but of his forethought and 
his genius. He builded for so many years that 
stars will be cold before his work is finished. 



38 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO- DA Y. 

We envious people, who cannot be wealthy, 
avenge ourselves by thinking and proclaiming 
that the pursuit of wealth is sordid and stifles 
the nobler sentiments of the soul. Whether 
this be so or not, if whoever makes to grow two 
blades of grass where but one grew before, is a 
benefactor of his race ; he also is a benefactor 
who makes two ships sail the sea where but one 
encountered its storms before. However sordid 
the owner may be, this is a benefit of which he 
cannot deprive the world. 

That men who have achieved great riches are 
not always shut out by their riches from the 
nobler emotions, Stephen Girard was himself a 
most illustrious example. A hundred years ago 
Philadelphia was under the black horror of a 
plague. So terrible was the fear that fell upon 
the city, that the tenderest of domestic ties — the 
love of husband and wife and of parents for 
children — seemed obliterated. Even gold lost 
its power in the presence of impending death. 
There was no refuge even in the hospital, which, 
reeking with disease, was a hell out of which 
there was no redemption. Neither money nor 
affection could buy service. " Fear was on every 

Girard was then in the prime of life, forty-two 
years old, in health and strength, already rich, 
and with a future as secure as ever falls to 
human lot. Of his own accord, as a volunteer, 



THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD DEEDS. 39 

he took charge of the interior of the deadly hos- 
pital, and for two long and weary months stood 
face to face with Death. 

A poet has sung of what makes the little song 
linger in our hearts forever while epics perish 
and tragedies pass out of sight. Why this is so 
we shall never know by reason alone. Deep 
down in the human heart there is a tenderness 
for self-sacrifice which makes it seem loftier than 
the love of glory, and reveals the possibility of 
the eternal soul. 

Wars and sieges pass away and great intellec- 
tual efforts cease to stir our hearts, but the man 
who sacrifices himself for his fellows lives forever. 

We forget the war in which was the siege of 
Zutphen, and almost the city itself, but we shall 
never forget the death of Sir Philip Sidney. 
Scholars alone read the work of his life, but all 
mankind honors him in the story of his death. 
The great war of the Crimea, in our own day, 
with its generals and marshals, and its bands of 
storming soldiery, has almost passed from our 
memories, but the time will never come when 
the charge of Balaklava will cease to stir the 
heart or pass from story or from song. It hap- 
pened to Stephen Girard, manner and merchant, 
seeking wealth and finding it, whose ships traveled 
every sea, whose intellect penetrated a hundred 
years into the future, to light up his life by a 
deed more noble than the dying courtesy of Sid- 



40 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

ney and braver than the charge of the Six Hun- 
dred, for he walked under his own orders day by 
day and week by week, shoulder to shoulder 
with death, and was not afraid. How fit, indeed, 
it is, that amidst the temples of learning which 
are the tribute to his intellect, should stand the 
tablet which is the tribute to his heart. 

Surely, if the immortal dead, serene with the 
wisdom of eternity, — are not above all joy and 
pride, he must feel a thrill to know that no 
mariner or merchant ever sent forth a venture 
upon unknown seas which came back with richer 
cargoes or in statelier ships. 



The New Patriotism. 

Richard Watson Gilder. 

What seems to be the most needed patriotism 
in our day and country ? In the first place, we 
ought as a nation to cultivate peace with all other 
nations. This was good patriotism in the days 
of George Washington ; it ought to be good 
patriotism in our day. The new patriotism, 
therefore, aims at a condition of peace with all 
the world ; it believes that Christianity is mocked 
by the spectacle of Christian nations in arms 
against each other. It believes that if America 
is ever to lift the sword against a foreign foe, it 
must not only be in a righteous cause, but with 



THE NEW PATRIOTISM. 4 1 

a pure heart ; that he who takes up his sword to 
enforce his will upon another must see that his 
own will is right and that his own hands are 
clean. 

But the new patriotism has other duties than 
those of armed conflict ; duties less splendid, but 
no less onerous, and requiring no less bravery; 
requiring bravery of a rarer order than that 
which shone upon a hundred battlefields of our 
Civil War. The roll of cowards among those 
who wore either the blue or gray is insignificant 
indeed. And there was scarcely a single act of 
treachery among the combatants on either side. 
Yes, most men will march for country and 
honor's sake straight into the jaws of death. 

But how many men in our day, when put to 
the test of civic courage, have we beheld turn 
cowards and recreants? How many political 
careers have we seen blighted by conscienceless 
compromise or base surrender? 

We have also seen the tremendous power of 
wise and disinterested effort in the domain of 
public affairs. We have seen brave men do nota- 
ble deeds for the betterment of our country and 
our communities. But there must be more such 
men, or the evil forces will, for a while, at least, 
triumph in a republic, whose fortunate destiny 
must not be weakly taken for granted by those 
who passionately love their country. We must 
have more leaders, and we must have more fol- 



42 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

lowers of the right. Men who will resist civic 
temptation, who will refuse to take the easy path 
of compliance, and who will fight for honesty 
and purity in public affairs. 



The Union Soldier. 

Hon. John M. Thurston. 

Sometimes in passing along the street, I meet 
a man who, in the left lapel of his coat, wears a 
little, plain, modest, unassuming brass button. 
The coat is often old and rusty ; the face above 
it seamed and furrowed by the toil and suffering 
of adverse years, perhaps beside it hangs an 
empty sleeve, and below it stumps a wooden 
peg. But when I meet the man who wears that 
button, I doff my hat and stand uncovered in 
his presence — yea ! to me the very dust his 
weary foot has pressed is holy ground, for I 
know that man, in the dark hour of the Nation's 
peril, bared his breast to the fire of battle to keep 
the flag of our country in the Union sky. 

May be at Donaldson he reached the inner 
trench ; at Shiloh held the broken line ; at Chatta- 
nooga climbed the flame-swept hill or stormed the 
clouds on Lookout Heights. He was not born or 
bred to soldier life. His country's summons 
called him from the plow, the forge, the bench, 
the loom, the mine, the store, the office, the 



THE UNION SOLDIER. 43 

college, the sanctuary. He did not fight for 
greed of gold, to find adventure, or to win re- 
nown. He loved the peace of quiet ways, and 
yet he broke the clasp of clinging arms, turned 
from the witching glances of tender eyes, left 
good-bye kisses upon tiny lips to look death in 
the face on desperate fields. 

And when the war was over he quietly took 
up the broken threads of love and life as best he 
could, a better citizen for having been so good a 
soldier. 

What mighty men have worn this same bronze 
button ! Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Logan, and 
a hundred more, whose names are written 
on the title page of deathless fame. Their glor- 
ious victories are known to men ; the history 
of their country gives them voice ; the white 
light of publicity illuminates them for every eye. 
But there are thousands who, in humbler way, 
no less deserve applause. How many knight- 
liest acts of chivalry were never seen beyond the 
line or heard above the roar of battle. I know 

t 

a man wearing the button whose modest lips will 
not unclose upon his own heroic deeds. Let me 
the story tell of one. On the morning of July 1, 
1862, 5,000 confederate cavalry advanced upon 
Boonville, Mo., then held by Col. Philip Sheridan 
with less than a thousand troopers. The federal 
line, being strongly intrenched, was able to hold 
its ground against the greatly superior force. 



44 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

But Sheridan, fearful of being outflanked, direct- 
ed a young captain to take a portion of two com- 
panies, make a rapid detour, charge the enemy 
in the rear, and throw its line into confusion, thus 
making possible a simultaneous and successful 
attack in front. Sheridan said to him : " I 
expect of your command the quick and desperate 
work usually imposed upon a forlorn hope ; " at 
the same time bidding him what promised to be 
an eternal farewell. Ninety-two men rode calmly 
out, knowing the supreme moment of their lives 
had come. What was in their hearts during 
that silent ride ? What lights and shadows 
flashed across the cameras of their souls ? To 
one pale boy there came the vision of a quaint 
old house, a white haired woman on her knees in 
prayer, an open Bible by her side, God's peace 
upon her face. Another memory held a cottage, 
half embedded in the shade of sheltering trees 
and clinging vines ; stray^bits of sunshine round 
the open door ; within, a fair young mother, 
crooning lullabys above a baby's crib. And one 
old grizzled hero seemed to see, in mists of un- 
shed tears, a brush-grown corner of the farm- 
yard fence, and through the rails a blended pic- 
ture of faded calico and golden curls and laugh- 
ing eyes. And then the little column halted on 
a bit of rising ground and faced — destiny ! 

Before them was a brigade of cavalry, 3,000 
strong. That way lay death. Behind them 



THE UNION SOLDIER. 45 

were the open fields, the sheltering woods, safe- 
ty and — dishonor. Just for a moment every 
cheek was blanched. A robin sang unheeded 
from a neighboring limb"; clusters of purple 
daisies bloomed unseen upon the grassy slope ; 
the sweet fresh breath of early summer filled the 
air, unfelt by all. They only saw the dear old 
flag of union overhead ; they only knew that 
foes of country blocked the road in front ; they 
only heard the ringing voice of their gallant 
leader ordering the charge, and with a yell the 
little troop swept om 

" Flashed every sabre bare, 
Flashed as they turned in air, 
Charging an army, 
While all the world wondered.*' 

So sudden and unexpected was the attack, so 
desperate and irresistible the charge, that this 
handful of men cut their way through the heart 
of a whole brigade. Then, in prompt obedience 
to the calm command of their captain, they 
wheeled, re-formed and charged again. At this 
opportune moment, while the confederates were 
in confusion, Sheridan's whole line dashed for- 
ward with mighty cheers and the day was won. 

That night forty of the ninety-two kept their 
eternal bivouac on the field of battle, their white 
faces kissed by the silent stars. The captain was 
left for dead, but thank God ! he still lives ; lives 



46 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

to wear the button of a people's love. For the 
man whose sublime courage and daring leader- 
ship gave victory and a first star to Phil Sheri- 
dan, was Russel A. Alger of Detroit. God 
bless the men who wore the button ! They 
pinned the stars of Union in the azure of our flag 
with bayonets, and made atonement for a nation's 
sin in blood. They took the negro from the 
auction block and at the altar of emancipation 
crowned him — citizen. They supplemented 
"Yankee Doodle " with " Glory Hallelujah," and 
Yorktown with Appomattox. Their powder 
woke the morn of universal freedom and made 
the name " American " first in all the earth. 
To us their memory is an inspiration and to the 
future it is hope. 



Men : Made, Self-made, and Unmade. 

Abridged. 

E. G. Robinson, D.D., LL.D. 

Late President of Brown University. 

The highest ideal of manhood that the world 
has yet seen now hovers before the minds of the 
Christian nations. But, alas ! how extremely 
small the number of those who ever approximate 
a realization of it. Geniuses may shoot above 
the common level, but they do not fill out the 
ideals of men. The ideal man is he in whom 



MEN: MADE, SELF-MADE, AND UNMADE. 4/ 

every endowment of his being is developed in 
harmony with every other, and each to the 
highest degree of which all are capable. 

The one great aim of all education is, of 
course, to secure the highest style of men. In 
strict accord with a people's conception of the 
highest style will always be its methods of 
education ; and the nearer its approach to a 
realization of its conception, the more exact and 
philosophical will be its educational methods. 
The greatest glory of any nation, country, or 
time, is its great men, — men who are great, not 
alone by great talents or by deeds of great daring, 
but by great excellence of character and by 
nobleness of purposes and acts. To multiply for 
itself such men is the great aim of a people's 
system of education. 

The most elaborate training, however, quite 
too often fails to produce first-rate men. Not 
unfrequently persons of high mental endow- 
ments leave our educational institutions crowned 
with academic honors only to drop at once into 
the ranks of the commonplace and the forgotten. 
Criticisms of our educational methods abound, 
and bitter complaints are heard on every hand 
that they fail to secure to those subjected to 
them the efficiency and power of leadership 
which the educated are rightfully expected to 
possess. Not a few of the liberally educated, 
failing in what they have undertaken in life, are 



48 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OE TO-DA Y. 

sneered at as the legitimate product of the 
schools and colleges. They have all of the form, 
but none of the power, of well-trained men. 
They are made men, who have been spoiled in 
the making. And what is it that has spoiled 
them? 

The cause of failure doubtless sometimes lies 
in poor teaching. Some teachers have a marvel- 
lous faculty for repressing rather than educing 
the powers of their pupils. They treat their 
pupils as the muleteer treats his mules : most 
approving them when they are most passive and 
docile in receiving and carrying their packs. 
They seem to suppose that the true function of 
the teacher is to impart rather than to draw out 
and stimulate to acquisition. Languages, especi- 
ally the ancient classics, are too often taught as 
anatomists sometimes teach physiology, solely 
by dissection. The languages are treated as if 
they were literally, what they often are called, 
dead languages ; as if, having long ago served 
their purpose as living tongues, their only use to 
us now is as illustrations of grammatical princi- 
ples ; and when they have served this purpose 
to the student, he is left to feel that, like the 
student of physiology with the cadaver when 
he is through with it, nothing else is to be done 
but to shovel the remains out of sight. Exces- 
sive doses of grammar have destroyed the appe- 
tite of many a student for the classics, so that 



MEN: MADE, SELF-MADE, AND UNMADE. 49 

he has dropped them from the day he ceased 
to study them in college. Another source of 
irreparable mischief in teaching is in the careless 
and slovenly work of men who make of teaching 
a temporary convenience for earning means to 
take them on to something else, — making it a 
mere stepping-stone to other and more congenial 
work. Indifferent to everything but their 
stipend, they glide in the most perfunctory way 
through all their offices as teachers, killing by 
their very indifference every springing germ of 
interest in their scholars. And I might add 
that others still, faultless in all the letter and 
minutiae of scholarship, and with the best of 
intentions as teachers, but naturally inert and 
self-contained, can awaken no enthusiasm in 
others, and succeed only in imparting of their 
own inertia to their pupils. 

But it is not alone through faults of teachers 
that so many of the educated, so many of the 
graduates of our colleges, find themselves un- 
fitted for success in life. Still more frequently 
the fault has been entirely with the educated 
themselves. And it often begins at the outset 
of student life. The road of the nobodies is 
already entered on when a student is willing to 
let other people do his hard work for him. If he 
lets his fellow-students work out his difficult prob- 
lems for him, and unravel for him the mysteries of 
obscure passages in his translations, it will be easy 



50 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA K 

to tell what his education will do for him. If 
he be content to submit himself in mere 
passivity to the carving hand of the professor, 
making no effort to acquire by his own exertions, 
it will not be difficult to foretell what he will have 
amounted to when professors shall have done 
with him. Docility is a prime quality in every 
good student ; but docility and passivity are not 
identical. Receptivity is good ; but receptivity 
with power to assimilate what is acquired, and 
multiply it, is far better. The pupil may present 
himself to the professor like a block of marble to 
be chiselled into form, or he may be like a tree 
which pruning and culture shall quicken into a 
healthier and more vigorous growth. Outward 
stimulus is all in vain without the inward energy 
that reacts and receives and assimilates. A 
stick may be whittled into the form of a man, 
but changed as it may be in form it will still be a 
stick of a man. Alas, that so many of the liber- 
ally educated prove to be only half-animate ! 

With the utmost efforts to promote individual 
development, it is marvellous how almost uni- 
formly the individual is merged in the mass, — 
how almost identical are the mental, social, and 
moral stamps put upon all the graduates of any 
single institution of learning. Any one of its 
graduates will show you the general character- 
istics of all. All have been poured into the same 
mould, and the native force of some of them 



MEN: MADE, SELF-MADE, AND UNMADE. 5 I 

must have been sadly compressed. Carefully 
observing professors in our professional schools 
easily distinguish between the differing types of 
mind and character coming from the different 
colleges, — can almost determine with accuracy 
the college a student has come from so soon as 
they have had fair opportunity to gauge him. 
College professors, after due experience, can even 
make some very happy guesses as to which of 
the great preparatory schools a boy has come 
from when they have had opportunity to taste 
the quality of his preparation. Even different 
law schools put a not undiscernible difference of 
impress on their graduates. Theological schools 
put a most conspicuous difference of stamps on 
theirs. The stamps of those of the same com- 
munion differ widely. It was not therefore a 
wholly ungrounded caricature once made of a 
theological school, representing it as a grist-mill 
into whose hopper men of the most diverse stat- 
ure, weight, and dress were being dropped while 
from the farther side of the mill along procession 
of clericals was emerging, every one of whom 
was precisely like every other in height, and 
weight, and carriage, and apparel. To cramp a 
man into likeness to other men, is to cripple him, 
if not to unfit him, for any efficient service in this 
world. Teachers, like rescuers of the freezing, 
must force their pupils into self-exertion if they 
would save them. 



52 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

Young men seeking an education are pretty 
sure to end in becoming mere made men when 
their ambition rests content with doing simply 
the tasks assigned for the recitation-room. Of 
course, the tasks should command the first atten- 
tion. They are assigned for the best of reasons. 
If needed to master them, they should absorb 
one's whole attention. But the tasks are not 
for their own sakes. Made an end in themselves, 
they are sure to dwarf the doer of them into an 
intellectual puppet or a parrot. Multitudes of 
men are scattered throughout our country who 
were admirable at their tasks in every stage of 
their education and in every department of 
knowledge, — who even went forth as honor men 
from the halls of learning, — but who in all effect- 
ive work in human society are hopeless failures 
You find them at the bar and you find them in 
the pulpit ; professors' chairs are not without 
them ; and they are not wanting in the halls of 
legislation, — admirably carved semblances of cul- 
tivated manhood, having all the shape and 
comeliness but not a whit of the living power of 
well-trained intellects. For them the work of 
the college and the schools was its own end ; 
when it was finished they had " attained." They 
rested on their laurels. Their education, so far 
from fitting, simply unfitted them for the work 
which a waiting world had a right to expect 
from them. 



MEN: MADE, SELF-MADE, AND UNMADE. 53 

But whatever the process and whatever the 
product in the making of men, one of the saddest 
aspects of human life is the number of the well- 
made who finally unmake themselves, and end 
their days in ultimate ruin of both mind and 
character. But let it ever be remembered that 
personal ruin comes neither by fate nor by fiat. 
Not even omnipotence can destroy rightly built 
character. No lightning bolt can shatter it, no 
flood drown it, no fire consume it. It is inde- 
structible, except by him who has formed it. 
Only the man himself can destroy himself. Per- 
sonal ruin, moreover, comes not as sudden catas- 
trophe, but as the result of causes, hidden it may 
be, but long at work. Human wrecks are not 
wrought in an hour. It was not a sudden and 
new-born impulse that prompted Lord Bacon to 
offer his smooth palm for the bribe that has 
blackened his name forever. The cinders and 
molten lava of the volcano are not born of a 
single day's burning. 

Evil thoughts are sure in due time to breed 
evil deeds. Man is social ; the social prompts to 
the convivial ; the convivial adds to its festivities 
the cup of exhilaration. The exhilaration may 
be a very little flame at the first, but lighted 
often it speedily blazes into an all-consuming 
fire which yielded to in youth, dominates man- 
hood, trampling all goodness and beauty into 
the mire. 



54 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

But it is not alone a collapse of character 
that is to be guarded against : a lesser, but still 
a deplorable calamity, not unfrequently befall- 
ing educated men in our time, is a species of 
intellectual bankruptcy, — a bankruptcy in some 
cases foreseen and foretold, as when one seeks 
to prepare himself for a profession by the short- 
est cut possible and simply to gain a livelihood ; 
in other cases, a bankruptcy unexpected and 
utterly disappointing, as when one proposing 
to prepare himself for a profession resolves to 
enter on the practice of it only after the com- 
pletest preparation that the highest industry 
can secure. As a student he outstrips his fel- 
lows, acquiring with rapidity and retaining with 
ease. His literary and scientific studies are 
finished with applause. His professional train- 
ing is passed through with great credit and the 
functions of the chosen profession are assumed. 
To these functions is given an undivided atten- 
tion. They absorb the whole man. The stud- 
ies that engrossed him in the academy and 
roused him to enthusiasm in college have 
dropped out of mind. College books that 
were not sold when finished are thrown aside 
as lumber. The imago of the insect is not more 
removed from its larva state than this profes- 
sional man from his school days. The connec- 
tion between the two periods is not that of 
continuous and consciously organic growth, but 



MEN: MADE, SELF-MADE, AND UNMADE. 55 

of an unconscious metamorphosis. The stud- 
ent has been lost in the lawyer, the doctor, the 
clergyman, the editor, the engineer. Here and 
there one rises to the full, rounded distinction 
of both scholar and professional man, a few- 
attain to eminence as masters of the technicali- 
ties of their professions ; but a countless number 
sink into mere professional hacks, — prostituting 
their professions into mere livelihood trades, — 
of whom the great public soon wearies and 
refuses to take account. The wealth of learning 
which they began to accumulate with such fair 
promise, husbanded and added to, would have 
enriched life and increased their power; but they 
are intellectual bankrupts. 

And yet even to these the training of the 
school-room and of the college has been invalu- 
able. They gave a mental discipline and useful 
knowledge which could have been obtained in 
no other way. Even the professional hack is 
a better hack for having been well trained in 
intellect. Without due mental discipline neither 
the principles involved in the professions could 
have been properly understood, nor the func- 
tions required have been intelligently per- 
formed ; and without the drudgery of the 
schools the requisite mental discipline would 
have remained unattainable ; and among all the 
studies yet open to man none seem so com- 
pletely capable of fulfilling at once the double 



56 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

office of discipline and of subsequent usefulness 
in life as those languages on which the existing 
literatures of the world more or less directly 
rest, and those sciences out of which are daily 
springing the discoveries and inventions that 
are fast changing the face of the whole earth, 
and serving as vehicles of the thoughts that are 
to transform into neighbors and brothers all the 
races of mankind. 



The Battle of Santiago. 

Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge. 

From " The War with Spain." Copyright, 1899, by 
Harper & Brothers. Used by permission of the publishers. 

The American people will always remember 
that hot summer morning and the anxiety that 
overspread the land. They will always see the 
American ships rolling lazily on the long seas, 
and the sailors just going to Sunday inspection. 
Then comes the long, thin trail of smoke drawing 
nearer the harbor's mouth. The ships see it, 
and we can hear the cheers ring out, for the 
enemy is coming, and the American sailor re- 
joices mightily to know that the battle is set. 
There is no need of signals, no need of orders. 
The patient, long-watching admiral has given 
direction for every chance that may befall. 
Every ship is in place ; every ship rushes forward, 
closing in upon the enemy, fiercely pouring shells 



THE BATTLE OF SANTIAGO. S7 

from broadside and turret. There is the Glouces- 
ter firing her little shots at the great cruisers, 
and then driving down to grapple with the tor- 
pedo boats. There are the Spanish ships, already 
mortally hurt, running along the shore, shattered 
and breaking under the fire of the Indiana, the 
Iowa, and the Texas ; there is the Brooklyn rac- 
ing by, to head the fugitives, and the Oregon 
dealing death-strokes as she rushes forward, 
forging to the front, and leaving her mark every- 
where as she goes. On they go, driving through 
the water, firing steadily and ever getting closer, 
and presently the Spanish cruisers, helpless, burn- 
ing, twisted wrecks of iron, are piled along the 
shore, and we see the younger officers and the 
men of their victorious ships periling their lives 
to save their beaten enemies. We see Wain- 
wright on the Gloucester as eager in rescue as he 
was swift in fight. We hear Philip cry out, 
" Don't cheer. The poor devils are dying." We 
watch Evans as he hands back the sword to the 
wounded Eulate, and then writes in his report : 
" I cannot express my admiration for my mag- 
nificent crew. So long as the enemy showed his 
flag, they fought like American seamen ; but 
when the flag came down, they were as gentle and 
tender as American women." They all stand out 
to us, these gallant figures, from admiral to sea- 
men, with an intense human interest, fearless in 
fight, brave and merciful in the hour of victory. 



5 8 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

Work and Play. 

Hamilton Wright Mabie. 

From " Essays on Nature and Culture." Copyright, 
1896, by Dodd, Mead and Co. Used by permission. 

NOTHING in natural processes is more sugges- 
tive than the apparent ease with which the 
greatest power is put forth and the most diverse 
and difficult tasks accomplished. Nature never 
rests, and yet is always in repose ; she never 
ceases to work, and yet always seems to be at 
play. The expenditure of power involved in the 
change from winter to summer is incalculable ; 
but the change is accomplished so quietly and by 
such delicate gradations that it is impossible to 
associate the idea of toil with it. There is no 
strenuous putting forth of force ; there is rather 
the overflow of a fathomless life. The tide of 
life runs to the summit of the remotest mountain 
which nourishes a bit of verdure, as easily as the 
water sweeps in from the sea when the tide turns 
and the creeks and inlets begin to sing once 
more in the music of returning waves. 

The secret of this silent, invisible, easy play 
of force and accomplishment of ends lies, perhaps 
in perfect adaptation of instrument to task, in 
absence of friction, in complete harmony between 
power, methods, and ultimate aims. 

The entire harmony which characterizes Na- 
ture in her unconsciousness is not possible to 



, WORK AND PLA Y. 59 

man in his consciousness ; but the conditions 
under which the life of Nature manifests itself 
and bears its manifold fruits is rich in hints and 
suggestions. At no point is the analogy between 
that life, in certain of its aspects, and the life of 
man, more striking and helpful. 

The secret of heroic work is harmony between 
man and his task ; an adjustment so complete 
that the putting forth of strength in a specific 
direction becomes as natural and instinctive as 
breathing or walking. So long as we toil, we are 
slaves, and the labor of the slave is always 
stamped with a certain inferiority. Toil involves 
drudgery, and is mechanical and perfunctory ; it 
is devoid of personality, beauty, or power; it 
implies a dominating force accomplishing its ends 
by sheer authority, and a free human spirit giv- 
ing its vitality full play. When toil becomes 
work, drudgery gives place to a conscientious 
and often cheerful expenditure of power and 
surrender of ease. The worker is free, and puts his 
heart and soul into his work with the joy of one 
who serves his own high aims rather than bends 
unwillingly to an authority stronger than his own 
personality. In its subordination of the minor 
to the major motives of living, its quiet substitu- 
tion of the lower for the higher pleasures, its dis- 
cipline, and its self-sacrifice, work, instead of being 
the traditional curse of the race, is its blessing, 
its happiness, and its reward. 



60 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

The heroic workers of the world are the men 
whose tasks are most enviable ; they are lifted 
above themselves by absorption in great under- 
takings ; they are engrossed in occupations which 
not only ease the pain of living by steadily call- 
ing forth the highest in the worker, but which 
educate, liberate, and enrich even while they 
exhaust. 

As work is higher than toil, so is play higher 
than work. Toil rests on submission, work on 
freedom, play on spontaneity and self-unconsci- 
ousness. The toiler is a slave, the worker a free 
man, the man who plays an artist. When work 
rises into the sphere of creativeness, takes on new 
forms, breathes the vital spirit, becomes distinctive 
and individual, it is transformed into art. It is 
no longer accomplished under the law of necess- 
ity ; it has become free. It is no longer full of 
strain and pain ; it is joyful ; it is the natural 
overflow of a rich and powerful nature. 

To turn work into play is, therefore, the high- 
est achievement of active life ; and to rise, in any 
department of work, from apprenticeship and 
artisanship to the ease and freedom of the artist, 
is to attain the most genuine and satisfying suc- 
cess which a life of activity offers. 

The pleasure of play is not the absence of 
effort, but the consciousness of freedom ; not 
escape from weariness, but the feeling that one 
has put himself into the game of life masterfully. 



THE MARCH OF THE CONSTITUTION. 6 1 

When the joy of working takes possession of a 
man, he ceases to take account of times and days 
and places ; he is always at work, for work is to 
him the normal form of activity. He not only 
loves his task, — the man in the working stage 
often loves his work, — but he individualizes it, 
handles it freely, freshly, originally. He makes 
his own times, develops his own methods, 
fashions his own tools. The work which he does 
with his hands is not a thing outside of his con- 
sciousness and apart from his experience ; it is a 
part of himself, for it is the expression of his own 
soul. 



The March of the Constitution. 

Andrew S. Draper, LL.D. 
President of University of Illinois. Contributed by the author. 

A FREE Constitution, written or unwritten, 
can and must be progressive. 

The Constitution of the United States has not 
been written in completed form ; it never will be. 
The Constitution itself has not been perfected ; 
it never will be. The resources of language can 
describe the Constitution but inadequately. It 
is infinitely more than our fathers were able to 
agree upon, or to anticipate and formulate in a 
written paper a hundred years ago. 

It is all that we inherited from the mother 
country after all the heroisms and triumphs in 



62 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

the evolution of a race, and in the building of a 
free nation through a thousand years. It covers 
a full knowledge of the accomplishments and the 
failures of all other governments in all ages and 
in all the world. 

It is the physical energy and the intellectual 
resourcefulness which have come from the ad- 
mixture of blood and of civilizations. 

It is the country we now possess, crossed by 
the natural thoroughfares of the nations, with 
endless shores and uncounted harbors washed by 
the waters of both oceans. It is our mountains 
and plains, our great lakes and majestic rivers, 
our diversified climate, our corn lands and cotton 
lands and wheat lands, our inexhaustible mines, 
and the herds upon our ten thousand hills. 

It is our great factories in every town, our 
magnificent steel highways threading our valleys, 
tunnelling or scaling our mountains and making 
the maps of our prairie states black with their 
frequency. It is our genius in invention and our 
skill and courage in engineering. It is our com- 
mon respect for labor, and the accounts in our 
savings banks. It is the unparalleled opportuni- 
ties, in every direction, which are offered to recti- 
tude and to endeavor, no matter how humble the 
roof under which they were born. It is our pub- 
lishing houses, our newspaper press, our libraries 
and museums and art galleries. 

It is the spirit of the American home, the 



THE MARCH OF THE CONSTITUTION. 63 

equality of right in it, the exalted position of 
women, and the dominating influence of the 
mother in the household. 

It is our free public school at every door, and 
our centers of the higher learning pushing the 
scientific advance in every possible direction and 
promoting every conceivable phase of intellectual 
activity. It is our churches and our Sunday 
schools, the complete toleration of religious 
opinion, and the common respect for religious 
worship. It is our private benevolences, and 
our steadily improving treatment of the trouble- 
some and dependent classes. 

It is the individualism and the balanced sense 
of the nation, the love of freedom which is so 
strong that no one is afraid of losing the object 
of it. It is the regard for laws which are funda- 
mental, the indifference to laws which are seen 
to be only advisory, the jealousy of laws which 
tend to favor special interests or seem to set at 
naught the common thought. 

The old Pilgrim at Plymouth, the minute-man 
at Lexington Green and Concord Bridge were in 
our Constitution at the beginning ; the citizen 
soldier of the Civil War, the Oregon upon her 
fifteen thousand miles journey around the Horn 
and then at once the decisive factor in the most 
sanguinary naval battle in all history, the college 
boys and farmers' lads and millionaires' sons 
fighting their way together up the flame-swept 



64 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

hill at San Juan, the veterans of the Ninth Regu- 
lar Infantry pushing their way through the Au- 
gust heat and the sand and filth of China, and 
battering down the gates of the Forbidden City 
to relieve the American legation from the horrors 
of Pekin, are all in the Constitution now. 

The spirit of the nation, that spirit which 
moved out of the old world into the new, that 
chastened and tolerant, that sober and yet ag- 
gressive spirit which separated from an established 
Church, and so learned how to separate from an 
autocratic State ; which centered at Plymouth 
Rock, and then tempered the heroic but intoler- 
ant sentiment at the Bay ; which moved out into 
the valley of the Connecticut, and then crossed 
the Berkshires into the valleys of the Hudson and 
the Mohawk and the Susquehanna ; which 
crossed the Alleghanies and the Blue Ridge ; 
which took possession of the prairies with con- 
fident and resolute step ; which scaled the 
Rockies and claimed the Pacific shores ; which 
passed through the Golden Gate and into the 
beyond. This spirit is the very life of the Con- 
stitution. The spirit that has fattened for a hun- 
dred years upon what it has fed, that chafes more 
and more at the long continued exactions of the 
kings, and that would extend free government, 
its helps and its opportunities, is in the Constitu- 
tion in yet larger measure now than in the days 
of our fathers. 



THE MARCH OF THE CONSTITUTION. 65 

More, far more, than any one can tell, is in the 
American Constitution. May the God of nations 
give us larger reverence for the inspirations that 
are in our history, whether inscribed in the law 
books of state, or written upon the hearts of men 
and women. May the written law be construed 
in the light of the traditions, the heroisms, the 
opportunities, and the aspirations of the unwrit- 
ten. May the Supreme Court never lack in dis- 
cretion, or in courage. And under its guidance 
may the Constitution march on. May it advance 
without greed and, if possible, without war. May 
it go forward with the consciousness of moral 
right to widen the area of civilization and enlarge 
the liberty of the human race. Never fear. 
Vastness may prove to be the ark of our safety. 
May all the fundamental principles of human 
liberty be upheld and, within the lines which 
they have laid down, may the Constitution and 
the flag of the great Republic march on. 

" Flag of the heroes who left us their glory, 
Borne through their battle-fields thunder and flame, 
Blazoned in song and illumined in story- 
Wave o'er us all who inherit their fame." 

" Light of our firmament, guide of our nation, 
Pride of her children, and honored afar, 
Let the wide beams of thy full constellation 
Scatter each cloud that would darken a star." 

" With the red for love, and the white for law, 
And the blue for the hope that our fathers saw." 



66 BEST AMERICAN ORA TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

Education and the Self-Made Man. 

Grover Cleveland. 
Used by permission. 

Manifestly among the tools to be used in 
the construction of the best quality of our self- 
made men, education is vitally important. Its 
share of the work consists in so strengthening 
and fashioning the grain and fibre of the material 
as to develop its greatest power and fit it for the 
most extensive and varied service. This process 
cannot be neglected with the expectation of sat- 
isfactory results, and its thoroughness and effect- 
iveness must depend upon the excellence and 
condition of the tool employed, and the skill and 
care with which it is used. Happily we are able 
to recognize conditions which tend to an im- 
proved appreciation of collegiate advantages. 
The extension of our school system ought to 
stimulate the desire of pupils to enjoy larger 
opportunities. The old superstition concerning 
the close relationship between the greatness of 
the self-made man and meager educational advan- 
tages is fast disappearing, and parents are more 
generally convinced- that the time and money 
involved in a college course for their children 
are not wasted. In these circumstances it seems 
to me there is no sufficient reason why so many 
of our young men fail of enrollment among our 



EDUCA 770 N AND THE SELF-MADE MAN. 6? 

college students. I am afraid the fault is largely 
theirs and that they do not fully realize the 
great benefit they, themselves, would derive 
from a liberal education, and even without this, 
the obligation resting upon them to do their 
share toward furnishing to our country the kind 
of self-made men it so much needs, ought to 
incite them to enter upon this work in the surest 
and most effective manner. We are considering 
the importance of a liberal education from a 
point of view that excludes the idea that such an 
education is only useful as a preparation for a 
professional career. In my opinion we could as 
reasonably claim that our professional ranks are 
more than sufficiently recruited, as to say that 
educated men are out of place in other walks of 
life. We need the right kind of educated, self- 
made men in our business circles, on our farms 
and everywhere. We need them for the good 
they can do by raising the standard of intelli- 
gence within their field of influence. We need 
them for the evidence they may furnish that 
education is a profitable factor in all vocations 
and in all the ordinary affairs of a community, 
and we especially and sorely need such men, 
abundantly distributed among our people, for 
what they may do in patriotically steadying the 
current of political sentiment and action. 

I hardly need say that this means something 
more than mere book learning and that it in- 



68 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

eludes the practical knowledge and information 
concerning men and things which so easily 
accompanies the knowledge of books, as well as 
the mental discipline and orderly habit of 
thought which systematic study begets. Ob- 
viously this definition excludes that measure of 
book learning barely sufficient to claim a diploma 
and used for no better purpose than to decorate 
the ease of wealth and ornament of an inactive 
existence. 

Sordidness is not confined to those whose only 
success consists in riches. There is a sordidness 
of education more censurable though perhaps 
less exposed. There are those whose success is 
made up of a vast accumulation of education who 
are as miserly in its possession as the most avari- 
cious among the rich. No one is j ustified in hoard- 
ing education solely for his selfish gratification. 
To keep it entirely in close custody, to take a 
greedy pleasure in its contemplation and to utilize 
it only as a means of personal unshared enjoyment, 
is more unpardonable than the clutch of the 
miser upon his money ; for he in its accumulation 
has. been subjected to the cramping and narrow- 
ing influences of avarice, while he who hoards 
education does violence to the broad and liberal 
influences which accompany its acquisition. 
The obligations of wealth and the obligations of 
education are co-operative and equally binding. 
The discharge of these obligations involves re- 



THE SOLDIER BOY. 69 

straint as well as activity. The rich man should 
restrain himself from harboring or having the 
appearance of harboring any feeling of purse- 
proud superiority over his less wealthy fellows. 
Without such restraint the distance is lengthened 
between him and those whom by contact and 
association, he might benefit. It is thus, too, 
that envious discontent and hatred of the rich is 
engendered and perpetuated. So, also, the man 
of education should carefully keep himself from 
the indulgence or seeming indulgence in a super- 
cilious loftiness toward his fellow-citizens. 
Otherwise he will see those whom he might im- 
prove and elevate, if within his reach, standing 
aloof and answering every invitation to a nearer 
approach with mockery and derision. The be- 
nign influence of both the educated and the rich 
is among and with their fellow-men of less educa- 
tion and less wealth ; and real and hearty fellow- 
ship is absolutely needful to the success of their 
mission. 



The Soldier Boy. 

Hon. John Davis Long. 

MEMORIAL Day will hereafter gather around 
it not only the love and tears and pride of the 
generations of the people, but more and more, in 
its inner circle of tenderness, the linking mem- 



70 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

ories of every comrade, so long as one survives. 
As the dawn ushers it in, tinged already with 
exquisite flush of hastening June, and sweet 
with the bursting fragrance of her roses, the 
wheels of time will each year roll back, and lo ! 
John Andrew is at the State-house, inspiring 
Massachusetts with the throbbing of his own 
great heart ; Abraham Lincoln, wise and patient 
and honest and tender and true, is at the nation's 
helm ; the North is one broad blaze ; the boys 
in blue are marching to the front ; the fife and 
drum are on every breeze ; the very air is patrio- 
tism ; Phil Sheridan, twenty miles away, dashes 
back to turn defeat to victory ; Farragut, lashed 
to the mast-head, is steaming into Mobile Har- 
bor ; Hooker is above the clouds, — ay, now in- 
deed forever above the clouds ; Sherman marches 
through Georgia to the sea; Grant has throttled 
Lee with the grip that never lets go; Richmond 
falls ; the armies of the Republic pass in that 
last great review at Washington ; Custer's plume 
is there, but Kearney's saddle is empty ; and, 
now again, our veterans come marching home to 
receive the welcome of a grateful people, and to 
stack in Doric Hall the tattered flags which 
Massachusetts forever hence shall wear above her 
heart. 

In memory of the dead, in honor of the living, 
for inspiration to our children, we gather to-day 
to deck the graves of our patriots with flowers, 



THE SOLDIER BOY. J I 

to pledge commonwealth and town and citizen 
to fresh recognition of the surviving soldier, and 
to picture yet again the romance, the reality, the 
glory, the sacrifice of his service. As if it were 
but yesterday you recall him. He had but 
turned twenty. The exquisite tint of youthful 
health was on his cheek. His pure heart shone 
from frank, outspeaking eyes. His fair hair 
clustered from beneath his cap. He had pulled 
a stout oar in the college race, or walked the 
most graceful athlete on the village green. He 
had just entered on the vocation of his life. 
The doorway of his home at this season of the 
year was brilliant in the dewy morn with the 
clambering vine and fragrant flower, as in and 
out he went, the beloved of mothers and sisters, 
and the ideal of a New England youth. . . . 

And when the drum beat, when the first 
martyr's blood sprinkled the stones of Baltimore, 
he took his place in the ranks and went forward. 
You remember his ingenuous and glowing letters 
to his mother, written as if his pen were dipped 
in his very heart. How novel seemed to him 
the routine of service, the life of camp and 
march ! How eager the wish to meet the enemy 
and strike his first blow for the good cause ! 
What pride at the promotion that came and put 
its chevron on his arm or its strap upon his 
shoulder ! . . . 

They took him prisoner. He wasted in Libby 



J 2 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OE TO- DA Y. 

and grew gaunt and haggard with the horror of 
his sufferings and with pity for the greater horror 
of the sufferings of his comrades who fainted and 
died at his side. . . . He tunneled the earth 
and escaped. Hungry and weak, in terror of 
recapture, he followed by night the pathway of 
the railroad. He slept in thickets and sank in 
swamps. He saw the glitter of horsemen who 
pursued him. He knew the bloodhound was on 
his track. He reached the line ; and, with his 
hand grasping at freedom, they caught and took 
him back to captivity. He was exchanged at 
last ; and you remember, when he came home 
on a short furlough, how manly and war-worn he 
had grown. But he soon returned to the ranks 
and to the welcome of his comrades. They 
recall him now alike with tears and pride. In 
the rifle-pits around Petersburg you heard his 
steady voice and firm command. Some one 
who saw him then fancied that he seemed that 
day like one who forefelt the end. But there 
was no flinching as he charged. He had just 
turned to give a cheer when the fatal ball struck 
him. There was a convulsion of the upward 
hand. His eyes, pleading and loyal, turned 
their last glance to the flag. His lips parted. 
He fell dead, and at nightfall lay with his face to 
the stars. Home they brought him, fairer than 
Adonis over whom the goddess of beauty wept. 
They buried him in the village churchyard under 



A MANLY FELLOW. 73 

the green turf. Year by year his comrades and 
his kin, nearer than comrades, scatter his grave 
with flowers. Do you ask who he was? He 
was in every regiment and every company. He 
went out from every village. He sleeps in every 
burying-ground. Recall romance, recite the 
names of heroes of legend and song, but there 
is none that is his peer. 



. A Manly Fellow. 

Cyrus Northrop, LL.D. 
President of the University of Minnesota. 

If there is any expression which, when applied 
to a young man brings honor to him, it is the 
expression, " A manly fellow." It means so very 
much that is good, and the absence of so very 
much that is bad. " He is a manly fellow. He 
dares do all that may become a man ; who dares 
do more is none." Both in what he dare do and 
what he dare not do, he is manly. For you will 
notice that it is quite as manly not to dare to do 
some things as it is to dare to do the boldest 
things. There is, for example, hardly any higher 
praise which a teacher can give a scholar than to 
say of him that " he scorns to do a mean act." 
The boy of whom that can be said is the boy 
who is going to be in after years the kind of man 
whom you like to meet, whom you can trust, 



74 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO- DA Y. 

who, in western phraseology, " will do to tie to." 
He is going to be the man, who, wherever he 
lives, will be looked up to and be trusted by the 
community; will be a leader in all measures for 
the welfare of society ; will be the man on whom 
his rector can lean with assurance ; on whose 
judgment the business men of his place can rely : 
to whom the widow and the orphan can go for 
advice and comfort ; and towards whom the eyes 
of those even who despise and hate the things 
which he esteems, will turn with involuntary 
admiration and respect. What this country needs 
is a larger supply of manly fellows to fill in with 
— of manly fellows who will stand by one another 
in defence of everything good, who will hold on 
to the highest things and yet not let go of the 
people who are below them ; who, without any 
cant or hypocrisy, but because in a manly way 
they believe in God and the things that are good, 
will do their best, by showing in their lives what 
Christianity really is, to prevent in this age of 
hardness and bitterness and growing hate, the 
Church of Christ from being separated by an im- 
passable gulf from the men and women for whom 
Christ died. It is a glorious thing to be this sort 
of a man, and there never was an age or a coun- 
try in which such men were so needed or had so 
blessed a future before them, as now and here. 
They are needed not merely as commanders or 
as leaders in the Church, but as privates and in 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 7$ 

society and business life — they are needed as ex- 
amples to show that a truly manly fellow can do 
his duty wherever God puts him, in the ranks 
just as well as in command. 



Daniel Webster. 

Hon. George F. Hoar. 
Used by permission. 

Mr. Webster made an impression upon the 
people of Massachusetts, in his time, as of a 
demi-god. His magnificent presence, his state- 
liness of manner, his dignity, from which he 
never bent, even in his most convivial and play- 
ful moments, his grandeur of speech and bearing, 
the habit of dealing exclusively with the greatest 
subjects, enabled him to maintain his state. His 
great, sane intelligence pervaded everything he 
said and did. But he has left behind few evi- 
dences of constructive statesmanship. There is 
hardly a great measure of legislation with which 
his name is connected, and he seems to us now 
to have erred in judgment in a great many cases, 
especially in undervaluing the great territory on 
the Pacific. He consented readily to the aban- 
donment of our claim to the territory between 
the forty-ninth parallel and that of fifty-four 
forty, which would have insured our supremacy 
on the Pacific, and have saved us from the 



76 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

menace and rivalry there of the power of Eng- 
land. He voted against the treaty by which 
we acquired California. That, however, is proof 
of a larger foresight than that of any of his 
contemporaries. Alone he foresaw the terrible 
Civil War, to which everybody else of his time 
was blind. What even he did not foresee was 
the triumphant success of the Union arms. It 
is hardly to be doubted that if the Civil War had 
come in 1850 or 1851, instead of 1861, its result 
would have been different. But Mr. Webster's 
great service to his country, a service second to 
that of Washington alone, is that he inspired in 
the people to whom union and self-government 
seemed but a doubtful experiment, the sentiment 
of a nationality, of love of the flag, and a passion- 
ate attachment to the whole country. When his 
political life began we were a feeble folk, the 
bonds of the Union resting lightly upon the 
states, the contingency of disunion contemplated 
without much abhorrence by many leading men, 
both North and South. Mr. Webster awoke in 
the bosom of his countrymen the conception of 
national unity and national greatness. It has 
been said more than once that the guns of our 
artillery in the great battles of the Civil War 
were shotted with the reply to Hayne which 
ended with the well-known words, " Liberty and 
Union, now and forever, one and inseparable." 
History has not yet settled the question of the 



DANIEL WEBSTER. Tj 

motive that inspired the 7th of March speech. 
Doubtless there were good and patriotic men, 
men who had loved him till that hour, who went to 
their graves believing that Webster fell — fell like 
Lucifer, Son of the Morning. There are, doubt- 
less, men living who think so to-day. To the 
thought of these men Whittier gave voice in his 
terrible " Ichabod," which is said to have 
wounded the great heart of its subject more 
than any other stroke that ever smote his 
mighty forehead. But the general judgment of 
his countrymen, first mellowing and softening 
into the belief which Whittier himself expressed 
in his later and tender poem, " The Lost Oppor- 
tunity," seems gradually coming to the conclu- 
sion that Webster differed from the friends of 
freedom of his time, not in a weaker moral sense, 
but only in a larger and profounder prophetic 
vision. When he resisted the acquisition of 
California, he saw what no other man saw, the 
certainty of the Civil War. It was not given 
even to him to see its wonderful and victorious 
result. When he compromised he saw in like 
manner the danger he tried to avert. He did 
not see the safety only to be attained through 
the path of danger and strife. Some of us 
judged him severely. Let us think of him now 
only as the best type of the farmer's boy of the 
early time ; as the great example of the New 
England character of the day of his earlier man- 



^8 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

hood, as the great defender and lover of Massa- 
chusetts, as the orator who first taught his 
country her own greatness, and who bound fast 
with indissoluble strength the bonds of union ; as 
the first of American lawyers, the first of Ameri- 
can orators, the first of American statesmen, 
and as the delightful citizen and neighbor and 
friend, of whom the people of his town said 
when he was laid in the grave : 

" How lonesome the world seems ; " and of 
whom his nearest friend said, when he died : 

" From these conversations of friendship no 
man — no man, old or young — went away to 
remember one word of profanity, one allusion of 
indelicacy, one impure thought, one unbelieving 
suggestion, one doubt cast on the reality of 
virtue, of patriotism, of enthusiasm, of the pro- 
gress of man — one doubt cast on righteousness, 
or temperance, or judgment to come." 



Spanish Prisoners of War. 

William Dean Howells. 

From " Literature and Life." Copyright, 1902, by Har- 
per and Brothers. Used by permission. 

Certain summers ago our cruisers, the St. 
Louis and the Harvard, arrived at Portsmouth, 
New Hampshire, with sixteen or seventeen 
hundred Spanish prisoners from Santiago de 



SPANISH PRISONERS OF WAR. 79 

Cuba. They were partly soldiers of the land 
forces picked up by our troops in the fights be- 
fore the city, but by far the greater part were 
sailors and marines from Cervera's ill-fated fleet. 
It was an afternoon of the brilliancy known 
only to an afternoon of the American summer, 
and the water of the swift Piscataqua River 
glittered in the sun with a really incomparable 
brilliancy. But nothing could light up the great 
monster of. a ship, painted the dismal lead-color 
which our White-Squadrons put on with the out- 
break of the war, and she lay sullen in the 
stream with a look of ponderous repose, to 
which the activities of the coaling-barges at her 
side, and of the sailors washing her decks, 
seemed quite unrelated. A long gun forward 
and a long gun aft threatened the fleet of 
launches, tugs, dories, and cat-boats which flut- 
tered about her, but the Harvard looked tired 
and bored, and seemed as if asleep. She had, in 
fact, finished her mission. The captives whom 
death had released had been carried out and 
sunk in the sea ; those who survived to a further 
imprisonment had all been taken to the pretty 
island a mile farther up the river, where the tide 
rushes back and forth through the Narrows like 
a torrent. Its defiant rapidity has won it there 
the graphic name of Pull-and-be-Damned ; and 
we could only hope to reach the island by a 
series of skilful tacks, which should humor both 



80 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OE TO-DA Y. 

the wind and the tide, both dead against us. 
Our boatman, one of those shore New Englanders 
who are born with a knowledge of sailing, was 
easily master of the art of this, but it took 
time. 

We drew nearer and nearer their prison isle, 
and it opened its knotty points and little ravines, 
overrun with sweet-fern, blueberry-bushes, and 
low blackberry-vines, and rigidly traversed with 
a high stockade of yellow pine boards. Six or 
eight long, low, wooden barracks stretched side 
by side across the general slope, with the captive 
officers quarters, sheathed in weather-proof black 
paper, at one end of them. About their doors 
swarmed the common prisoners, spilling out 
over the steps and on the grass, where some of 
them lounged, smoking. 

The prisoners were already filing out of their 
quarters at a rapid trot towards the benches 
where the great wash-boilers of coffee were set. 
Each man had a soup plate and bowl of enam- 
elled tin, and each in his turn received a quarter of 
a loaf of fresh bread and a big ladleful of steam- 
ing coffee, which he made off with to his place at 
one of the long tables under a shed at the side of 
the stockade. One young fellow tried to get a 
place not his own in the shade, and our officer 
when he came back explained that he was a 
guerrillero y and rather unruly. We heard 
that eight of the prisoners were in irons, by 



SPANISH PRISONERS OF WAR. 8 1 

sentence of their own officers, for misconduct, 
but all save this guerrillero here were docile and 
obedient enough, and seemed only too glad to 
get peacefully at their bread and coffee. 

First among them came the men of the 
Cristobal Colon, and these were the best looking 
of all the captives. From their pretty fair aver- 
age the others varied to worse and worse, till a 
very scrub lot, said to be ex-convicts, brought up 
the rear. They were nearly all little fellows, and 
very dark, though here and there a six-footer 
towered up, or a blond showed among them. 
They were joking and laughing together, harm- 
lessly enough, but I must own that they looked 
a crew of rather sorry jail-birds ; though whether 
any kind of humanity clad in misfits of our navy 
blue and white, and other chance garments, with 
close-shaven heads, and sometimes bare feet, 
would have looked much less like jail-birds I am 
not sure. Still they were not prepossessing, and 
though some of them were pathetically young, 
they had none of the charm of boyhood. No 
doubt they did not do themselves justice, and to 
be herded there like cattle did not improve their 
chances of making a favorable impression on the 
observer. At a certain bugle-call they dispersed, 
when they had finished their bread and coffee, 
and scattered about over the grass, or returned 
to their barracks. We were told that these 
children of the sun dreaded its heat, and kept 



82 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

out of it whenever they could, even in its decline ; 
but they seemed not so much to withdraw and 
hide themselves from that, as to vanish into the 
history of " old, unhappy, far-off " times, where 
prisoners of war properly belong. I roused my- 
self with a start as if I had lost them in the past, 
The whole thing was very American in the 
perfect decorum and the utter absence of cere- 
mony. Our good fellows were in the clothes 
they wore through the rights at Santiago, and 
they could not have put on much splendor if 
they had wished, but apparently they did not 
wish. They were simple, straightforward and 
adequate. There was some dry joking about 
the superiority of the prisoners' rations and 
lodgings, and our officer ironically professed his 
intention of messing with the Spanish officers. 
But there was no grudge, and not a shadow of 
ill-will, or of that stupid and atrocious hate 
toward the public enemy which abominable 
newspapers and politicians had tried to breed in 
the popular mind. There was nothing manifest 
but a sort of cheerful purpose to live up to that 
military ideal of duty which is so much nobler 
than the civil ideal of self-interest. Perhaps 
duty will yet become the civil ideal, when the 
peoples shall have learned to live for the common 
good, and are united for the operation of the 
industries as they now are for the hostilities. 



"FOREFATHERS' DAY." 83 

" Forefathers' Day." 

Arthur Twining Hadley, LL. D. 
President of Yale University, 

OUR theme is an old one ; its application is 
vitally and intensely modern. As an event of 
history, the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers is re- 
ceding into the past, and tends to be overshadowed 
in our minds by other events of greater popular 
interest ; but as an example for men's lives it was 
never more important than at this opening of the 
twentieth century, and in the face of the new 
political and industrial problems which that 
century brings. 

It not infrequently happens that the meaning 
of a great anniversary is for a time partly lost ; 
and then found once more, when some renewal 
of the old conditions arises, and it becomes an 
inspiration for the present, as well as a remem- 
brance of the past. So it was with the birthday 
of our national independence. In the first half 
of the nineteenth century the celebration of the 
Fourth of July was becoming perfunctory. To 
those who knew not what it was to fight for an 
idea, the memory of Revolutionary heroes became 
obscured ; their principles mere phrases, from 
which the vital meaning had gone out. But 
when hearts were tried in the fires of another war, 
then did this anniversary rise into something 
more than an empty form of commemoration of 



84 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

the dead, and make itself an occasion of patriotism 
in the living. 

So it has been, to some extent, with our remem- 
brance of the Puritan, both of the Old England 
and of the New. Although we have not ceased 
to render him gratitude for the hardships which 
he bore in order that his descendants might live 
a life of freedom, we have in some measure lost 
personal contact with the man and understanding 
of what he really was. By nine persons out of 
ten the Puritans of the seventeenth century are 
remembered chiefly for the pattern of their clothes 
or the phraseology of their creeds ; and even the 
tenth man, who really goes below the surface, 
often lays wrong emphasis on the different parts 
of their activity, and fails to understand the true 
reason of their power. He thinks of the Puritan 
not so much for what he did as for what he re- 
fused to do and forbade others to do ; as one who 
held himself aloof from the joys of life and apart 
from the sympathies of humanity. 

Not in such restrictions and refusals was the 
strength of the Puritan character founded. Not 
by any such negative virtue did it conquer the 
world. The true Puritan was intensely human — 
a man who " ate when he was hungry and drank 
when he was thirsty ; loved his friends and hated 
his enemies." If he submitted to self-imposed 
hardships, and practiced abstention where others 
allowed themselves latitude, it was not because he 



"FOREFATHERS* DAY." 85 

had less range of interest than his fellows, but 
because he had more range. He did these things 
as a means to an end. His thoughts went be- 
yond the limits of the single day or the single 
island. He was a man who considered power as 
more than possession, principles as better than 
acquirements, public duty as paramount to per- 
sonal allegiance. He regarded himself as part of 
a universe under God's government. For the 
joy of taking his part in that government he 
steeled himself to a temper which spared not his 
own body nor that of others. His life, with all 
its powers, was held in trust. To the fulfilment 
of this trust he subordinated all considerations 
of personal pleasure. 

Men are always divided more or less clearly 
into two types — those who recognize this charac- 
ter of life as a trust and those who fail to recog- 
nize it. But not in all ages and in all countries 
does the distinction between the two types mani- 
fest itself sharply in historic action. For often 
the range of possible interests is so small, and the 
conduct of life so bound down by conventions, 
that the man who would pursue pleasure finds no 
opportunity for adventure, nor does the man who 
is ready to accept large trusts find occasion for 
their exercise. But in England, at the beginning 
of the seventeenth century, the discovery of new 
worlds abroad and the development of new prob- 
lems at home gave opportunity for this divergence 



86 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

of character to show itself to the utmost. The 
explorer who journeyed for adventure or for gain 
was differentiated from him who journeyed for 
freedom's sake. The citizen who was ready to 
seek his fullest enjoyment in the old political 
order was separated from him who would hazard 
that enjoyment for what he believed to be eternal 
principles of human government. It was because 
England had men of the latter type that her sub- 
sequent progress as a free nation has been real- 
ized. It was the Puritan, who, by subjecting his 
power and his love of life to self-imposed re- 
straints, made freedom possible in two hemi- 
spheres. 

Once more we are come to a similar parting of 
the ways. The close of the nineteenth century 
has witnessed an expansion of the geographical 
boundaries of men's interests comparable only to 
that which came three hundred years earlier, in 
the days of Queen Elizabeth. It is for the next 
generation to decide how these new fields shall 
be occupied. Shall it be to gratify ambition, 
commercial and political ? or shall it be to exer- 
cise a trust which has been given us for the ad- 
vancement of the human race? Shall we enter 
upon our new possessions in the spirit of the 
adventurer or in the spirit of the Puritan? The 
conflict between these two views will be the really 
important issue in the complex maze of inter- 
national relations during the half century which 



"FOREFATHERS' DAY." 87 

is to come. The outcome of this conflict is likely 
to determine the course of the world's history for 
ages thereafter. 

Nor is it in international politics and in prob- 
lems of colonization alone that this issue is aris- 
ing between those who regard the world as a 
field for pleasure and those who regard it as a 
place for the exercise of a trust. The devel- 
opment of modern industry has placed the alter- 
native even more sharply before us in the order- 
ing of our life at home. The day is past when 
the automatic action of self-interest could be 
trusted to regulate prices, or when a few simple 
principles of commercial law, if properly applied, 
secured the exercise of justice in matters of 
trade. The growth of large industries and of 
large fortunes enables those who use them 
rightly to do the public much better service 
than was possible in ages previous. It also 
permits those who use them wrongly to render 
the public correspondingly greater injury. No 
system of legislation is likely to meet this diffi- 
culty. The outcome depends on the character 
of the people. Is our business to be dominated 
by the spirit of the adventurer, or by the spirit 
of the Puritan ? Shall we regard wealth as a 
means of enjoyment and commercial power as a 
plaything to be used in the game of personal 
ambition, or shall we treat the fortunes which 
come into our hands as a trust to be exercised 



SS BEST AMERICAN ORA TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

for the benefit of the people, rigidly abstaining 
from its abuse ourselves, and unsparingly refus- 
ing to associate with others who abuse it ? We 
have no right to sit here this evening and com- 
memorate our descent from the Pilgrim Fathers 
if we have any doubt concerning our answer. 
Let us throw ourselves, heart and soul, on that 
side of the industrial question which proves us 
worthy of Puritan ancestry — the side which 
regards wealth as a trust, to be used in behalf of 
the whole people and in the furtherance of the 
purposes of God's government. 

Abroad and at home the issue is defining itself. 
We have the chance to prove whence we sprang. 
We cannot add to the glory of those whose 
deeds we celebrate, but we can help to carry 
their work one historic step further toward its 
accomplishment. In the words of Abraham 
Lincoln — no less appropriate now than on the 
day when they were first spoken at Gettysburg 
— " It is for us to be dedicated to the great task 
remaining before us ; that from these honored 
dead we take increased devotion to that cause to 
which they gave the last full measure of devo- 
tion ; that we here highly resolve that these dead 
shall not have died in vain ; that this Nation, 
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom ; 
that government of the people, by the people, 
and for the people, shall not perish from the 
earth." 



CITIZENSHIP, 89 

Citizenship. 

Hon. William P. Frye. 

Abridged for this collection by Woodbury Pulsifer, 
Secretary to Senator Frye. 

Citizenship ! What is citizenship ? It has 
a broader signification than you or I are apt to 
give it. Citizenship does not mean alone that 
the man who possesses it shall be obedient to 
the law, shall be kindly to his neighbors, shall 
regard the rights of others, shall perform his 
duties as juror, shall, if the hour of peril comes, 
yield his time, his property and his life to his 
country. It means more than that. It means 
that his country shall guarantee to him and pro- 
tect him in every right which the Constitution 
gives him. What right has the Republic to 
demand his life, his property, in the hour of 
peril, if, when his hour of peril comes, it fails 
him ? Why, a man died in England a few years 
ago, Lord Napier of Magdala, and his death 
reminded me of an incident which illustrates 
this, an incident which gave that great lord his 
name. A few years ago King Theodore of 
Abyssinia seized Captain Campbell, a British 
citizen, and incarcerated him in a dungeon on 
the top of a mountain nine thousand feet high. 
England demanded his release, and King Theo- 
dore refused. England fitted out and sent on 



90 BEST AMERICAN ORA TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

five thousand English soldiers, and ten thousand 
Sepoys, debarked them on the coast, marched 
them nine hundred miles through swamp and 
morass under a burning sun. Then they marched 
up the mountain height, they scaled the walls, 
they broke down the iron gates, they reached 
down into the dungeon, they took that one 
British citizen like a brand from the burning and 
carried him down the mountain side, across the 
morass, put him on board the white-winged ship 
and bore him away to England in safety. That 
cost Great Britain millions of dollars, and it 
made General Napier Lord Napier of Magdala. 

Was not that a magnificent thing for a great 
country to do? Only think of it! A country 
that has an eye sharp enough to see way across 
the ocean, way across the morass, way up into 
the mountain top, way down into the dungeon, 
one citizen, one of her thirty millions, and then 
has an arm strong enough to reach across the 
ocean, way across the morass, way up the moun- 
tain height and down into the dungeon and take 
that one and bear him away home in safety. 
Who would not live and die, too, for the country 
that can do that ? This country of ours is worth 
our thought, our care, our labor, our lives. What 
a magnificent country it is ! What a Republic 
for the people, where all are kings ! Men of 
great wealth, great power, great influence can 
live without any difficulty in a monarchy ; but 



CITIZENSHIP. 91 

how can you and I, how can the average man, 
live under despotic power? Oh, this blessed 
Republic of ours stretches its hand down to the 
men and lifts them up, while despotism puts its 
heavy hand on their heads and presses them 
down ! This blessed Republic of ours speaks to 
every boy in the land, black or white, rich or 
poor, and asks him to come up higher and higher. 
You remember that boy out here on the prairie, 
the son of a widowed mother, poor, neglected 
perhaps by all except the dear old mother. But 
the Republic did not neglect him. The Republic 
said to that boy : " Boy, there is a ladder, its 
foot is on the earth, its top is in the sky. Boy, 
go up." And the boy mounted that ladder rung 
by rung ; by the rung of the free schools, by the 
rung of the academy, by the rung of the college, 
by the rung of splendid service in the United 
States army, by the rung of the United States 
House of Representatives, by the rung of the 
United States Senate, by the rung of the Pres- 
idency of the great Republic, by the rung of a 
patient sickness and a heroic death, until James 
A. Garfield is a name to be forever honored in 
the history of our country. 

Now, is not a Republic like that worth the 
tribute of our conscience? Is it not entitled 
to our best thought, to our holiest purpose? 

Let us pledge ourselves to give it our loyal 
service and support until every man in this 



92 BEST AMERICAN ORA TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

Republic, black or wnite, shall be protected in all 
the right's which the Constitution of the United 
States bestows upon him. 



Reverence for the Flag. 

Gen. Horace Porter. 

In preserving among the sons that spirit of 
patriotism which has been handed down from 
the sires, I know of no better method of incul- 
cating this sentiment in the minds of the youth 
of the rising generation than an effort to inspire 
them with a still more exalted respect and rever- 
ence for the flag — that symbol of national su- 
premacy, that emblem of the country's glory. 
They should be taught that that flag is not simply 
a banner for holiday display ; that it is not 
merely a piece of bunting which can be pur- 
chased for a few shillings in the nearest shop, 
but that it is the proud emblem of dignity, au- 
thority, power; that if insulted, millions will 
spring to its defense. They should be taught 
that as that flag is composed of, and derives its 
chief beauty from its different colors, so should 
its ample folds cover and protect its citizens of 
different color. 

It is for these reasons that I like to see the 
flags of the war for the integrity of the Union 
carried through the streets in the hands of our 



REVERENCE FOR THE FLAG. 93 

veterans upon fete days. Those precious war 
banners, bullet-riddled, battle-stained, many of 
them but remnants of their former selves, with 
scarcely enough left of them on which to imprint 
the names of the battles they have seen. Every 
tattered shred which flutters in the breeze is an 
object lesson in patriotism. The youth of the 
land should be made to feel that their country's 
flag is to be their pillar of cloud by day, their 
pillar of fire by night ; that it is to wave above 
them in victory, be their rallying-point in defeat, 
and if, perchance, they offer up their lives a sac- 
rifice in its defense, its crimson stripes will min- 
gle with their generous hearts' blood ; its gentle 
folds will rest upon their bosom in death ; its 
very presence there upon their bodies, coffined 
or uncoffined, will write a more enduring epitaph 
than that on the sarcophagus in which the great 
Sesostris sleeps. 

That flag should be kept everywhere in view. 
It is particularly necessary in a land like this, in 
which there are so many who have been reared 
under foreign flags, and who cannot be made too 
familiar with the flag of the great Republic. I 
think there would be nothing more grateful to 
the hearts of the American people than to have 
it ordained by national and State enactment that 
the flag of the country should be hoisted over 
every Government building, every public place, 
every prominent memorial, and especially over 



94 BEST AMERICAN ORA TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

every schoolhouse — kept there by day and by 
night, through calm and through storm, and never 
hauled down. At the beginning of our last war a 
rallying cry rang throughout the land, which 
quickened every pulse, which made the blood 
tingle in the veins of every loyal citizen — a rally- 
ing cry which we cannot too often repeat: "If 
any man hauls down the American flag, shoot him 
on the spot." 



The Art of Optimism. 

William De Witt Hyde, LL. D. 

President of Bowdoin College. Arranged by President 
Hyde for this collection. 

THE world we live in is a world of mingled 
good and evil. Whether it is chiefly good or 
chiefly bad depends on how we take it. To 
look at the world in such a way as to emphasize 
the evil is the art of pessimism. To look at it 
in such a way as to bring out the good, and 
throw the evil into the background, is the art of 
optimism. - s The facts are the same in either case. 
It is simply a question of perspective and empha- 
sis. Whether we shall be optimists or pessimists 
depends partly on temperament, but chiefly on 
will. If you are happy it is largely to your own 
credit. If you are miserable it is chiefly your 



THE ART OF OPTIMISM. 95 

own fault. I propose to show you both pes- 
simism and optimism ; give a prescription for 
each, and leave you to take whichever you like 
best : for whether you are a pessimist or an 
optimist doesn't depend on whether the world 
is wholly good or wholly bad, or whether you 
have a hard lot or an easy one. It depends on 
what you like, and what you want, and what 
you resolve to be. Perchance you are the most 
fortunate and happy person among my hearers. 
There are thousands of people who would be 
miserable were they situated precisely as you 
are. They would make themselves miserable, 
because that is their temperament ; that is their 
way of looking at things. And even in your 
happy and enviable condition, with all your 
health and wealth, and hosts of friends, and 
abundance of interests, they would find plenty of 
stuff to make their misery out of. On the other 
hand, you may be the person of all others among 
my hearers who has the hardest time, who has 
lost dearest friends, who has the severest struggle 
with poverty, who has worst enemies, who meets 
crudest unkindness, who seems to have least to 
live for. Thousands of people would be suprem- 
ely happy if they were in precisely your circum- 
stances. Life is like the ocean. It drowns one 
man, because he yields to it passively and blindly. 
It buoys up the other because he strikes it skil- 
fully, and buffets it with lusty sinews. 



g6 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

There is enough that is bad in every life to 
make one miserable who is so inclined. We all 
know people who have plenty to eat, a roof over 
their heads, a soft bed to lie in, money in the 
bank to cover all probable needs for the rest of 
their days, plenty of friends, good social position, 
an unbroken family circle, good education, even 
the profession of some sort of religion ; who yet 
by magnifying something that happened to 
them a long while ago ; or something that may 
happen to them at some time to come ; or what 
somebody has said about them ; or the work 
they have to do ; or the slight some one has 
shown them, or even without anything as definite 
as even these trifles, contrive to make themselves 
and everybody else perpetually wretched and 
uncomfortable. These people have acquired the 
art of pessimism. 

Practically, anybody can be a pessimist who 
wants to. The art is easily acquired. Here are 
the rules for it. 

Live in the passive voice ; intent on what you 
can get, rather than on what you can do : in the 
subjunctive mood ; meditating on what might be, 
rather than what actually is : in the past or fu- 
ture tense ; either harping on what has been, or 
worrying about what will be, rather than facing 
the facts of the present : in the third person ; 
finding fault with other people instead of setting 
your own affairs in order : in the plural number; 



THE ART OF OPTIMISM. 97 

following the standards of respectability of other 
people rather than your own perception of what 
is fit and proper. 

Keep these rules faithfully, always measuring 
the worth of life in terms of personal pleasure, 
rather than in terms of growth of character or 
service of high ends, and you will be a pessimist 
before you know it. For pessimism is the logi- 
cal and inevitable outcome of that way of look- 
ing at life. 

A sound optimism accepts with open eyes all 
the hard facts on which pessimism builds. En- 
joyment is fleeting. Nothing can permanently 
satisfy us. As Browning said to an artist who 
complained that he was so dissatisfied with what 
he had done, " But think, if you were satisfied, 
how little you would be satisfied with ! " Optim- 
ism proclaims this very incapacity of ours to be 
satisfied with anything finite, the glory of our 
nature, the promise and potency of our progress 
and development, the assurance of our immortal- 
ity. If good is satisfied feeling, which is to be 
given to us ready-made, then indeed we shall 
never get it, and pessimism is the ultimate truth. 
If good is a state of eager and enthusiastic activ- 
ity of will, then this world of ours is just the best 
place imaginable to give field for this activity. 

Having given rules for the art of pessimism, I 
suppose I ought to be equally explicit in regard 
to optimism. I will here again adopt the easily 



9$ BEST AMERICAN OKA TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

rememberable form in which the rules for pessim- 
ism were cast. Indeed, the rules for optimism 
are simply the inverse of the rules for pessimism. 
Live in the active voice ; intent on what you 
can do rather than on what happens to you : in 
the indicative mood ; concerned with facts as 
they are rather than as they might be ; in the 
present tense ; concentrated on the duty in hand, 
without regret for the past or worry about the 
future: in the first person; criticising yourself 
rather than condemning others : in the singular 
number; seeking the approval of your own con- 
science rather than popularity with the many. 
Whoever lives the life of such unselfish devotion 
to the good of others and of all, and lives it in 
the active voice, indicative mood, present tense, 
first person, singular number, is bound to find 
his life full and rich and glad and free ; is bound, 
in other words, to be an optimist. 



The New Era in Higher Education. 

James B. Angell, LL. D. 
President of the University of Michigan. 
It is of the highest importance that our in- 
creased facilities for higher education and any 
new enthusiasm which these may engender for 
devotion to scholarship, shall not be permitted to 
make students indifferent to their duty as 
educated citizens or rob them of their interest in 



THE NEW ERA IN HIGHER EDUCA TION. 99 

public affairs. The universities must not become 
monasteries, in which men are trained to exclude 
themselves from proper participation in the right 
guidance of public opinion. They who are known 
as professional politicians sometimes have their 
jests at " the scholar in politics." Doubtless he 
has, like other men, sometimes made mistakes. 
Perhaps he has occasionally overrated the value 
of his services. Very often while pursuing a 
manly and straightforward course, he has been 
outwitted and circumvented by the cunning 
schemers who call themselves practical politicians, 
because they do not scruple to employ means to 
which he will not descend. 

But no thoughtful man will deny that scholars 
as citizens have at least as plain and responsible 
duties as other citizens. Nor will it be easy to 
deny that if by reason of their training they have 
some special advantages for instructing and guid- 
ing others in the solution of grave public ques- 
tions, they have by this fact a special responsibil- 
ity and duty laid on them. 

Now, if anything is obvious, if anything has 
been demonstrated by the history of this govern- 
ment, it is that our democratic institutions cannot 
be successfully worked, unless we can somehow 
secure the prevalence of an intelligent public 
opinion on public matters and a general willing- 
ness on the part of our citizens to offer whatever 
sacrifices and render whatever services are re- 
auirad to make that public opinion operative. 



IOO BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OE TO-DAY. 

Men have been very busy in devising various 
kinds of constitutional or legislative machinery 
to secure wise legislation and just and effective 
administration. But no improvements in organ- 
ization, no contrivances, however ingenious, can 
insure us a pure democratic government, unless 
we have an enlightened public opinion and a 
patriotic spirit guiding and sustaining it in all its 
life. 

Says Lord Rosebery in a recent speech, in 
which he urges upon his countrymen the impor- 
tance of providing more generously for education, 
" a great, trained and intelligent population, 
capable of sustained thinking on public questions, 
is essential to success in the modern world." 

Now there is a certain danger that men, who 
become absorbed in literary or scientific pursuits, 
lose somewhat of the interest, which it is their 
duty to cherish, in public affairs or at any rate 
refrain from making the weight of their well- 
considered judgment felt by those around them. 
They may indeed seek no official position, and 
may shrink from it if it is offered to them. They 
may prefer not to engage in the rough and tum- 
ble contests of bitter personal campaigns, though 
even this may at times become the duty of every 
good citizen. But in some manner, through 
some one of the many channels of influence open 
to every intelligent man, they should make their 
legitimate contribution toward the creation of a 



NE W ERA IN HIGHER ED UCA TION. I O I 

sound public sentiment in every emergency. If 
the maintenance of such a sentiment is the essen- 
tial condition of the successful operation of 
Republican institutions, how can the best trained 
minds plead any excuse for failure to do their 
full part in creating and upholding and manifest- 
ing such a sentiment in every hour of the 
country's need ? 

There could be no greater calamity for the 
universities than for the belief to gain ground 
that the education they furnish to their choicest 
and most gifted graduates shuts them off from 
a living sympathy and fellowship with the great 
body of their countrymen who have not had the 
fortune to share their advantages of training, and 
from a vital interest in a pure and beneficent 
administration of government. It would be a 
calamity to the nation to have such a wall of 
partition between the scholars and the rest of the 
people. But it would, if permitted, be a yet 
greater misfortune for the universities which had 
begotten such children. 

There is, indeed, little danger of such a calamity 
in very great national emergencies. The read- 
iness with which in our Civil War the college 
halls were deserted by the thousands of young 
men, who hastened to the front, many of them, 
alas ! never to return, is a sufficient proof of this. 
The peril is in quieter days, when it is not so 
obvious that the vigilant interest of all is needed 



102 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS 0E TO-DA Y. 

to safeguard the public welfare, and when, there- 
fore, the scholar in the sweet seclusion of his 
study is tempted to let things drift wheresoever 
they will, without any remonstrance on his part. 
We may confidently look for two results of 
the magnificent endowments of universities and 
institutions of research. The number of gifted 
men and women who will devote themselves to 
very advanced studies and to original investiga- 
tions in every field of research will be largely 
increased. And the boundaries of knowledge 
will be expanded. Rich as the last century has 
been beyond all the centuries in important gains 
in every branch of learning, in the discovery of 
scientific principles, and in the application of 
science to the arts of life, it is reasonable to 
expect that the gains of the present century will 
be yet greater. Happy are you who are young 
enough to cherish the hope of living to see them. 
Happier still are those choice spirits among you, 
— and I trust there are some — who may be con- 
spicuous in securing those gains for humanity. 



Decoration Day. 

Abridged. 

Hon. W. Bourke Cockran. 

The character of a nation is often known by 

its festivals. The character of the festival we 

celebrate to-day is the most unique in the his- 



DE CORA TION DAY. 1 03 

tory of the world. We celebrate in all its en- 
tirety the sublime epoch when fidelity to the 
Republic triumphed over the dangers that com- 
prised the Civil War, and we emerged from the 
conflict radiant with the light of liberty estab- 
lished and indestructible American institutions, 
with the undying vigor of American patriotism. 
The conflict in which we engaged was not made 
by the generation in which we live. It was a 
legacy handed down by the fathers of the Re- 
public after the foreign invader had been driven 
out. 

But the Union soldier was great in peace as 
well as in war. His was not merely a triumph of 
arms ; it was a triumph of heart and mind, for 
the Union soldier won the love of the foe that he 
vanquished. To-day, throughout the length and 
breadth of the country, there is a love for the 
flag of the Union. To-day the Union stands, not 
defended by armed force or by frowning for- 
tresses. Its foundations are laid in the hearts of 
our citizens, South as well as North, and it will 
be durable and eternal because of that founda- 
tion. But although the vigor of the Union 
soldier in taking up arms was creditable to him, 
he also deserves credit for the manner in which 
he laid down his arms. Never before did a vic- 
torious army so lay down its arms at the behest 
of civil rulers without the slightest disturbance 
throughout the length and breadth of the land. 



104 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

The lesson which this day teaches above all 
others is that no matter what difficulties may 
arise, the patriotism of this republic will be able 
to surmount them. No matter what dangers 
may threaten our institutions, there is always to 
be in reserve the American patriotism sufficient 
to solve every question and surmount every diffi- 
culty. The victory of the Union soldiers proved 
the capacity and the power of this patriotism 
which underlies American citizenship. No 
sooner had the smoke lifted from Southern 
battlefields ; no sooner had the rivers that had 
run red with blood once more resumed their 
course clear and pellucid to the sea, and the 
South was seen humbled, than the men of the 
North turned with charity and brotherly love to 
the aid of the men with whom they had fought. 
The victory which was achieved for the Union was 
thus made a permanent one for the union of these 
States. 

The lesson of the Union was not ended in 1865. 
The mission of the Union soldier did not close 
with the war. It continues to-day as a patriot- 
ism which is the best security of the government. 
We are reminded of the survivors as we turn to- 
day from the graves of the brave men who were 
the heroes of the war. 

On the Capitol at Washington, surmounting 
the great dome where Congress is in session, there 
may be seen a bright light high above all else on 



PROFIT OF THE LABORER AND CONSUMER. 10$ 

the building. And as you recede from the place, 
and the turrets and fluted columns of the edifice 
disappear in the darkness, the light at the top 
seems to be higher and higher, and finally seems 
to blend with the horizon until finally only this 
light marks the temple of freedom of our be- 
loved Government. And, as we celebrate this 
Decoration Day, looking back on the martyrs of 
the Civil War, their deeds shall be to us the 
brilliant light which shall grow ever brighter and 
brighter, and illumine the pathway of the Repub- 
lic to liberty, prosperity, and happiness. 



The Profit of the Laborer and Consumer. 

Abridged. 
Hon. Elihu Root, 

The industrial history of the last half century 
is a history first of the steady increase of produc- 
tive power, and second only to that of the con- 
tinual struggle between these four interests — the 
brains, the capital, the laborer, and the consumer, 
to secure what each considers to be a fair share 
of the benefits of the increased wealth. That 
struggle will continue so long as the increase of 
productive power and the added increments of 
wealth that come from that increase continue. 
Capital and brains always get the advantage at 
first. The first fruits of each new increase of 



106 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

productive power, whether through invention or 
through organization, come to them. But our 
industrial history shows that the laborer and the 
consumer slowly but surely wrest their share of 
the advantage from capital and secure it for 
themselves. The organizers of the Sugar Trust 
made a great deal of money for themselves, but 
we are getting sugar now for less than it cost to 
make it before the Sugar Trust was formed. 
The organizers of the Standard Oil Company 
have made a great deal of money, but the poor- 
est American farmer is lighting his little house 
to-night at trifling cost more brilliantly than 
palaces were lighted a century ago : and these 
are the consumers' shares of the wealth created 
by the brains and capital of the Sugar Company 
and the Standard Oil Company. 

The continually recurring contests between 
capital and labor are a necessary part in this 
great process of industrial development and dis- 
tribution of wealth — each striving to get what it 
thinks to be its share and naturally differing 
about the proportions. There is no occasion to 
groan or to wring our hands or to be alarmed 
over the process. It is natural and healthy and 
a process of industrial improvement. Of course 
there are wrongs committed, unjustifiable and ir- 
ritating things are done upon both sides, but 
these are continually being remedied and just re- 
sults are continually being wrought out. We 



PROFIT OF THE LABORER AND CONSUMER, loy 

are in the habit of saying that the interests of 
capital and labor are one, or that they are recip- 
rocal, which is another way of saying the same 
thing. Their interests are one in the production 
of wealth, and their interests are reciprocal in 
not being so unreasonable about the division of 
the benefits as to stop the production. 

There is a continual approach toward a good 
understanding of the terms and relations which 
are dictated by a recognition of these mutual 
and reciprocal interests. If you will look back 
at the condition of the railroad business at the 
time of the Debs riots, then consider the rela- 
tions since established between the railroad 
owners and the associated engineers, firemen, 
trainmen and conductors under the leadership of 
Mr. Arthur, Mr. Sargent, Mr. Clarke and Mr. 
Morrissey, you will see a striking illustration of 
the progress being made. 

Another good illustration is to be found in the 
agreement made the other day between the tin 
plate manufacturers and their workmen, in which 
the workmen voluntarily agreed to a reduction 
of wages in order to enable the manufacturers 
to underbid foreign competitors for the contract 
to supply tin cans for the Standard Oil product. 

Another illustration is the agreement between 
employers and employed for the annual readjust- 
ment of wages throughout the greater part of 
the bituminous coal field. 



Io8 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

The more intelligent the parties are, the more 
readily such relations are reached, and as we are 
all growing more intelligent, all learning all the 
time, the prospect is not dark, but bright. 



The "Open Door" Policy in China. 

Hon. Cushman K. Davis. 

The subjection of China to full intercourse 
with Western civilization is the most stupendous 
secular event since the discovery of America by 
Columbus. 

No diplomatic achievement in our history, ex- 
cepting the treaty negotiated by Franklin by 
which our independence was acknowledged, and 
the conventions by which Louisiana and the 
Provinces of Mexico were acquired, can be placed 
before this negotiation. It did not expand our 
possession, but it will expand our influence and 
ascendency immeasurably. It is the result, how- 
ever, of the two expansions as to Louisiana and 
Mexico, and of the acquisition of the Philip- 
pines, Alaska and Hawaii, without which the 
United States would have been the most remote 
from, instead of being as it is now, the nearest of 
all the nations to the great Asiatic market. 
These negotiations bound all the powers recipro- 
cally to identity and equality of right and duty 
as to everything which can pertain to commerce 
and intercourse with China. 



THE " OPEN DOOR " POLICY IN CHINA. IO9 

The sovereignty of the United States has 
been expanded immensely by the war with Spain. 
I believe that for this the American people were 
ordained. There need be no fear for the future. 
No administration will ever attempt, it will not 
be permitted by the controlling majesty of that 
people to attempt, to contract that sovereignty 
within the limits from which it has expanded, 
bearing with it all the imperial powers of right- 
eous government, regenerating civilization and 
irreversible progress. 

With all this the United States will, as always 
heretofore, stand for peace. It is as true of na- 
tions as it is of the smallest villages, or of two 
families, or of two men, that peace is secured by 
obedience to that precept of righteous selfishness 
— " mind your own business." We shall attend 
to our own affairs. We shall not entangle our- 
selves in the controversies of European States; 
nor, by any unfriendly act, intermeddle with that 
which does not concern us. Those states will 
fight to the utterance their own wars in their 
own way, and be judges for themselves of the 
causes for which those wars shall be waged. 

The United States is the great armed Neutral 
of the world. It will have peace, not as the boon 
of a suppliant non-combatant, but as the right of 
a peace-loving, armored, puissant nation whose 
rights are secured by its manifest ability to cause 
other nations to respect them. 



I IO BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

John Marshall. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. 
Used by permission. 

As we walk down Court Street, Boston, in the 
midst of a jostling crowd, our eyes are like to 
fall upon the small, dark building that stands at 
the head of State Street, and, like an ominous 
reef, divides the stream of business in its course 
to the gray cliffs that tower beyond. And, who- 
ever we may be, we may chance to pause and 
forget our hurry for a moment, as we remember 
that the first waves that foretold the coming 
storm of the Revolution broke around that reef. 

In that old State House, we remember, James 
Otis argued the case of the writs of assistance, 
and in that argument laid one of the foundations 
for American constitutional law. Just as that 
little building is not diminished but rather is 
enhanced and glorified by the vast structures 
which somehow it turns into a background, so 
the beginnings of our national life, lose none of 
their greatness by contrast with all the mighty 
things of later date, beside which, by every law 
of number and measure, they ought to seem so 
small. To those who took part in the Civil 
War, the greatest battle of the Revolution 
seems little more than a reconnoissance in force, 
and Lexington and Concord were mere skir- 



JOHN MARSHALL. 1 1 1 

mishes that would not find mention in the news- 
papers. Yet veterans who have known battle on 
a modern scale, are not less aware of the spiritual 
significance of those little fights, than the 
enlightened children of commerce who tell us 
that soon war is to be no more. 

If I were to think of John Marshall simply by 
number and measure in the abstract, I might 
hesitate in my superlatives just as I should 
hesitate over the battle of Brandywine if I 
thought of it apart from its place in the line of 
historic cause. It is most idle to take a man 
apart from the circumstances which were his. 

Remove a square inch of mucous membrane, 
and the tenor will sing no more. Remove a 
little cube from the brain, and the orator will be 
speechless ; or another, and the brave, generous, 
and profound spirit becomes a querulous trifler. 
A great man represents a great ganglion in the 
nerves of society, or to vary the figure, a strat- 
egic point in the campaign of history, and part 
of his greatness consists in his being there. 

There fell to Marshall perhaps the greatest 
place that was ever filled by a judge ; but when 
I consider his might, his justice, and his wisdom, 
I do fully believe that if American law were to 
be represented by a single figure, sceptic and 
worshipper alike would agree without dispute 
that the figure could be but one alone, and that 
one John Marshall. 



1 1 2 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

We live by symbols, and what shall be sym- 
bolized by any image of the sight depends upon 
the mind of him who sees it. The setting aside 
of this day in honor of a great judge may stand 
to a Virginian for the glory of his glorious State ; 
to a patriot for the fact that time has been on 
Marshall's side, and that the theory for which 
Hamilton argued, and Webster spoke, and Grant 
fought, and Lincoln died, is now our corner stone. 
To the more abstract but farther-reaching contem- 
plation of the lawyer it stands for the rise of a 
new body of Jurisprudence, by which guiding 
principles are raised above the reach of statute 
and State, and judges are intrusted with a solemn, 
and hitherto unheard of authority and duty. To 
one who lives in what may seem to him a solitude 
of thought, this day — as it marks the triumph of 
a man whom some Presidents of his time bade 
carry out his judgments as he could — this day 
marks the fact that all thought is social, is on its 
way to action ; that, to borrow the expression of 
a French writer, every idea tends to become first 
a catechism and then a code ; and that, accord 
ing to its worth his unhelped meditation may one 
day mount a throne, and without armies, or with 
them, may shoot across the world the electric 
despotism of an unresisted power. It is all a 
symbol, if you like, but so is the flag. The flag 
is but a bit of bunting to one who insists on prose. 
Yet, thanks to Marshall, and to the men of his 



THE UPLIFTING OF THE NEGRO RACE. II3 

generation, its red is our life-blood, its stars our 
world, its blue our heaven. It owns our land. 
At will it throws away our lives. 



The Uplifting of the Negro Race. 

Booker T. Washington. 
Abridged. Contributed by the author. 

One-third of the population of the South is 
of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the 
material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can 
disregard this element of our population and 
reach the highest success. Ignorant and inexpe- 
rienced, it is not strange that in the first years of 
our new life we began at the top instead of at the 
bottom ; that a seat in Congress or the State 
Legislature was sought more than real estate or 
industrial skill ; that the political convention or 
stump speaking had more attractions than start- 
ing a dairy farm or truck garden. 

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly 
sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the 
unfortunate vessel was seen a signal : " Water, 
water ; we die of thirst ! " The answer from the 
friendly vessel at once came back : " Cast down 
your bucket where you are." A second time the 
signal, " Water, water ; send us water ! " ran up 
from the distressed vessel, and was answered : 
" Cast down your bucket where you are." And 



1 14 BEST AMERICAN OR A TlONS OF TO-DA Y. 

a third and fourth signal for water was answered : 
" Cast down your bucket where you are." The 
captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding 
the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came 
up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth 
of the Amazon River. To those of my race who 
depend on bettering their condition in a foreign 
land, or who underestimate the importance of 
cultivating friendly relations with the Southern 
white man, who is their next door neighbor, I 
would say : " Cast down your bucket where you 
are " — cast it down in making friends in every 
manly way of the people of all races by whom 
we are surrounded. 

Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in com- 
merce, in domestic service, and in the professions. 
And in this connection it is well to bear in mind 
that whatever other sins the South may be called 
to bear, when it comes to business, pure and 
simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given 
a man's chance in the commercial world. Our 
greatest danger is, that in the great leap from 
slavery to freedom, we may overlook the fact 
that the masses of us are to live by the produc- 
tions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we 
shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify 
and glorify common labor, and put brains and 
skill into the common occupations of life ; shall 
prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the 
line between the superficial and the substantial, 



THE UPLIFTING OF THE NEGRO RACE. 1 1 5 

the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. 
No race can prosper until it learns that there is 
as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a 
poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, 
and not at the top. Nor should we permit our 
grievances to overshadow our opportunities. 

To those of the white race who look to the in- 
coming of those of foreign birth and strange 
tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, 
were I permitted, I would repeat what I say to 
my own race, " Cast down your bucket where 
you are." Cast it down among the eight million 
Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity 
and love you have tested in days when to have 
proved treacherous meant the ruin of your fire- 
sides. Cast down your bucket among these 
people who have, without strikes and labor wars, 
tilled your fields, cleared your forest, builded 
your railroads and cities, and brought forth 
treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped 
make possible this magnificent representation of 
the progress of the South. Casting down your 
bucket among my people, helping and encourag- 
ing them as you are doing on these grounds, and 
to education of head, hand, and heart, you will 
find that they will buy your surplus land, make 
blossom the waste places in your fields, and run 
your factories. While doing this, you can be 
sure in the future, as in the past, that you and 
your families will be surrounded by the most 



1 1 6 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y % 

patient, faithful, law abiding, and unresentful 
people that the world has seen. As we have 
proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing 
your children, watching by the sick-bed of your 
mothers and fathers, and often following them 
with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the 
future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you 
with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, 
ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense 
of yours ; interlacing our industrial, commercial, 
civil, and religious life with yours in a way that 
shall make the interests of both races one. In 
all things that are purely social we can be as 
separate as the ringers, yet one as the hand in all 
things essential to mutual progress. 

There is no defense or security for any of us 
except in the highest intelligence and develop- 
ment of all. If anywhere there are efforts tend- 
ing to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro, let 
these efforts be turned into stimulating, encourag- 
ing and making him the most useful and intelli- 
gent citizen. Effort or means so invested will 
pay a thousand per cent, interest. These efforts 
will be twice blessed — " blessing him that gives 
and him that takes." 

There is no escape through law of man or God 

from the inevitable : 

" The laws of changeless justice bind, 
Oppressor with oppressed ; 
And close as sin and suffering joined, 
We march to fate abreast." 



THE UPLIFTING OF THE NEGRO RACE. W] 

Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you 
in pulling the load upwards, or they will pull 
against you the load downwards. We shall con- 
stitute one-third and more of the ignorance and 
crime of the South, or one-third of its intelligence 
and progress ; we shall contribute one-third to 
the business and industrial prosperity of the 
South, or we shall prove a veritable body of death, 
stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to 
advance the body politic. 

The wisest among my race understand that the 
agitation of questions of social equality is the 
extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoy- 
ment of all the privileges that will come to us, 
must be the result of severe and constant struggle, 
rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has 
anything to contribute to the markets of the 
world is long in any degree ostracised. It is im- 
portant and right that all privileges of the law be 
ours, but it is vastly more important that we be 
prepared for the exercise of these privileges. The 
opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now 
is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to 
spend a dollar in an opera house. 

In conclusion, I pledge that in your effort to 
work out the great and intricate problem which 
God has laid at the doors of the South, you shall 
have at all times the patient, sympathetic help of 
my race and let us pray God it will come, in a 
blotting out of sectional differences and racial ani- 



1 1 8 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

mosities and suspicions, in a determination to ad- 
minister absolute justice, and in a willing obedi- 
ence among all classes to the mandates of law. 
This, coupled with our material prosperity, 
will bring into our blessed South a new Heaven 
and a new earth. 



The Last Address of William McKinley. 

Delivered at the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, the 
day before he was assassinated. Abridged. 

After all, how near one to the other is every 
part of the world. Modern inventions have 
brought into close relation widely separated peo- 
ples and made them better acquainted. Geo- 
graphic and political divisions will continue to 
exist, but distances have been effaced. Swift 
ships and fast trains are becoming cosmopolitan. 
They invade fields which a few years ago were 
impenetrable. The world's products are ex- 
changed as never before, and with increasing trans- 
portation facilities come increasing knowledge 
and larger trade. Prices are fixed with mathe- 
matical precision by supply and demand. The 
world's selling prices are regulated by market 
and crop reports. We travel greater distances in 
a shorter space of time and with more ease than 



THE LAST ADDRESS OF WM. McKINLEY. 1 1 9 

was ever dreamed of by the fathers. Isolation is 
no longer possible or desirable. The same im- 
portant news is read, though in different lan- 
guages, the same day in all Christendom. 

The telegraph keeps us advised of what is oc- 
curring everywhere, and the press foreshadows, 
with more or less accuracy, the plans and pur- 
poses of the nations. Market prices of products 
and of securities are hourly known in every com- 
mercial mart, and the investments of the people 
extend beyond their own national boundaries 
into the remotest parts of the earth. Vast 
transactions are conducted and international 
exchanges are made by the tick of the cable. 
Every event of interest is immediately bulletined. 
The quick gathering and transmission of news, 
like rapid transit, are of recent origin, and are 
only made possible by the genius of the inventor 
and the courage of the investor. It took a 
special messenger of the Government, with every 
facility known at the time for rapid travel, nine- 
teen days to go from the City of Washington to 
New Orleans with a message to General Jackson 
that the war with England had ceased and a 
treaty of peace had been signed. How different 
now ! We reached General Miles, in Porto Rico, 
and he was able through the military telegraph 
to stop his army on the firing line with the 
message that the United States and Spain had 
signed a protocol suspending hostilities. We 



1 20 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

knew almost instantly of the first shots fired at 
Santiago, and the subsequent surrender of the 
Spanish forces was known at Washington within 
less than an hour of its consummation. The first 
ship of Cervera's fleet had hardly emerged from 
that historic harbor when the fact was flashed 
to our Capital, and the swift destruction that 
followed was announced immediately through 
the wonderful medium of telegraphy. 

So accustomed are we to safe and easy com- 
munication with distant lands that its temporary 
interruption, even in ordinary times, results in 
loss and inconvenience. We shall never forget 
the days of anxious waiting and suspense when 
no information was permitted to be sent from 
Pekin, and the diplomatic representatives of the 
nations in China, cut off from all communication, 
inside and outside of the walled capital, were 
surrounded by an angry and misguided mob that 
threatened their lives ; nor the joy that thrilled the 
world when a single message from the Govern- 
ment of the United States brought, through our 
Minister, the first news of the safety of the be- 
siege diplomats. 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century 
there was not a mile of steam railroad on the 
globe ; now there are enough miles to make its 
circuit many times. Then there was not a line 
of electric telegraph ; now we have a vast mileage 
traversing all lands and all seas. God and man 



THE LAST ADDRESS OF WM. Mc KIN LEY. 121 

have linked the nations together. No nation can 
longer be indifferent to any other. And as we 
are brought more and more in touch with each 
other, the less occasion is there for misunder- 
standings, and the stronger the disposition, when 
we have differences, to adjust them in the court 
of arbitration, which is the noblest forum for the 
settlement of international disputes. 

My fellow citizens, trade statistics indicate 
that this country is in a state of unexampled 
prosperity. The figures are almost appalling. 
They show that we are utilizing our fields and 
forests and mines, and that we are furnishing 
profitable employment to the millions of work- 
ing-men throughout the United States, bringing 
comfort and happiness to their homes, and mak- 
ing it possible to lay by savings for old age and 
disability. That all the people are participating 
in this great prosperity is seen in every Ameri- 
can community and shown by the enormous and 
unprecedented deposits in our savings banks. 
Our duty in the care and security of these 
deposits and their safe investment demands the 
highest integrity and the best business capacity 
of those in charge of these depositories of the 
people's earnings. 

We have a vast and intricate business, built up 
through years of toil and struggle, in which every 
part of the country has its stake, which will not 
permit of either neglect, or of undue selfishness. 



1 22 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

No narrow, sordid policy will subserve it. The 
greatest skill and wisdom on the part of manu- 
facturers and producers will be required to hold 
and increase it. Our industrial enterprises, which 
have grown to such great proportions, affect the 
homes and occupations of the people and the 
welfare of the country. Our capacity to produce 
has developed so enormously, and our products 
have so multiplied, that the problem of more 
markets requires our urgent and immediate at- 
tention. Only a broad and enlightened policy 
will keep what we have. No other policy will 
get more. In these times of marvelous business 
energy and gain we ought to be looking to the 
future, strengthening the weak places in our in- 
dustrial and commercial systems, that we may be 
ready for any storm or strain. 

By sensible trade arrangements which will not 
interrupt our home production we shall extend 
the outlets for our increasing surplus. A system 
which provides a mutual exchange of commodi- 
ties is manifestly essential to the continued and 
healthful growth of our export trade. We must 
not repose in fancied security that we can forever 
sell everything and buy little or nothing. If 
such a thing were possible it would not be best 
for us, or for those with whom we deal. We 
should take from our customers such of their 
products as we can use without harm to our in- 
dustries and labor. Reciprocity is the natural 



THE LAST ADDRESS OF WM. McKINLEY. 1 23 

outgrowth of our wonderful industrial develop- 
ment under the domestic policy now firmly es- 
tablished. 

What we produce beyond our domestic con- 
sumption must have a vent abroad. The excess 
must be relieved through a foreign outlet, and 
we should sell everywhere we can and buy wher- 
ever the buying will enlarge our sales and pro- 
ductions, and thereby make a greater demand 
for home labor. 

The period of exclusiveness is past. The ex- 
pansion of our trade and commerce is the press- 
ing problem. Commercial wars are unprofit- 
able. A policy of good will and friendly trade 
relations will prevent reprisals. Reciprocity 
treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the 
times ; measures of retaliation are not. If, per- 
chance, some of our tariffs are no longer needed 
for revenue or to encourage and protect our in- 
dustries at home, why should they not be em- 
ployed to extend and promote our markets 
abroad? Then, too, we have inadequate steam- 
ship service. New lines of steamships have al- 
ready been put in commission between the 
Pacific coast ports of the United States and 
those on the western coasts of Mexico and Cen- 
tral and South America. These should be fol- 
lowed up with direct steamship lines between 
the western coast of the United States and South 
American ports. One of the needs of the times 



124 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

is direct commercial lines from our vast fields of 
production to the fields of consumption that we 
have but barely touched. Next in advantage to 
having the thing to sell is to have the conveyance 
to carry it to the buyer. We must encourage 
our merchant marine. We must have more 
shipSo They must be under the American flag, 
built and manned and owned by Americans. 
These will not only be profitable in a commercial 
sense ; they will be messengers of peace and 
amity wherever they go. 

We must build the Isthmian Canal, which will 
unite the two oceans and give a straight line of 
water communication with the western coasts of 
Central and South America and Mexico. The 
construction of a Pacific cable can not be longer 
postponed. 

Let us ever remember that our interest is in 
concord, not conflict ; and that our real eminence 
rests in the victories of peace, not those of war. 
Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously 
vouchsafe prosperity, happiness and peace to all 
our neighbors, and like blessings to all the peoples 
and powers of earth. 



THE NAVY. 125 

i 

The Navy. 

Admiral George Dewey. 
Contributed to this collection by Admiral Dewey. 

The world knows to-day the important part 
which the Navy has had in all the wars in which 
our nation has been engaged since its existence. 
The part which the Navy has taken in the mak- 
ing of history has been a glorious one from the 
days of 1776 until the present moment. To re- 
call the names of such men as Paul Jones, Perry, 
McDonough, Farragut, and a host of others, 
awakens memories of those true American patri- 
ots and of their gallant deeds in behalf of home 
and country. 

Without doubt some of you now present are 
descended from sailor heroes who took part in 
the early struggles of this nation upon the seas. 
Our countrymen have known, of course, during 
all the intervening years, that there was a Navy 
at the time of the Revolution ; but it has remained 
for an American naval officer, in very recent 
years, to show through his writings what tremen- 
dous importance attached to the exploits of our 
early Navy, small as it was. 

In the War of the Revolution the United States 
as a nation had only forty-one vessels in com- 
mission, including the " Bonhomme Richard " 
and her four Franco-American consorts. Of 



126 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

these, twenty-four were lost by capture or wreck 
during the war. Within the same period, how- 
ever, the number of war vessels lost by the British 
was one hundred and two. It will thus be seen 
that at the very beginning of our country's exist- 
ence there was set for future generations the 
example of inflicting upon the enemy's sea-power 
a very much greater loss than our own sustained ; 
and all our history shows that the^Navy has prof- 
ited by this example. 

In addition to war vessels, many privateers 
were engaged in capturing and destroying mer- 
chant vessels sailing under English colors, the 
total number of captures of all kinds being more 
than eight hundred. In this war our infant Navy 
developed the abilities of such men as Paul Jones, 
Nicholas Biddle, John Nicholson, Richard Dale, 
Joshua Barney, John Barry, and others, — men 
whose names shine out upon the Navy's roll of 
honor in undying glory. Let no one forget that 
upon this list of deathless fame stands forth the 
name of Count de Grasse, that French command- 
er who did so much, with the splendid fleet sent 
over by our sister nation, to help this country in 
achieving its independence. The careful reader 
of history knows that the operations of de 
Grasse's fleet were of powerful effect in bringing 
about the surrender of Lord Cornwallis and end- 
ing the war. All latter-day writers agree that the 
successful ending of hostilities was due in great 



" lest We forget:* 12^ 

measure to the sea-power of France ; and I re- 
gard it as particularly happy that our nation is 
so soon to show afresh its gratitude to France by 
erecting a statue to perpetuate the memory of 
de Grasse's compatriot on land, Count de Ro- 
chambeau. 

I have spoken briefly of our earliest Navy. 
To-day our Navy contains as fine ships as float 
upon the seas ; officers capable of upholding the 
valorous traditions of our service ; and the finest 
body of trained seamen to be found in the world, 
all working together to a common end, — the 
honor and glory of our flag and country. 



" Lest We Forget." 

David Starr Jordan, LL.D. 
President of Leland Stanford Jr. University. Abridged. 

Patriotism is the will to serve one's country, 
to make one's country better worth serving. It 
is a course of action rather than a sentiment. 
The shrilling of the mob is not patriotism. It is 
not patriotism to trample on the Spanish flag, to 
burn fire-crackers, or to twist the Lion's tail. 
The " glory " of war turns our attention from 
civic affairs. Neglect invites corruption. Noble 
and necessary as was our Civil war, we have not 
yet recovered from its degrading influences. The 
war with Spain has united at last the North and 



128 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

South, we say. So at least it appears. When 
Fitzhugh Lee is called a Yankee, and all the 
haughty Lees seem proud of the designation, we 
may be sure that the old lines of division exist 
no longer. But our present solidarity shows that 
the nation was sound already, else a month could 
not have welded it together. 

It is twenty-eight years ago to-day that a rebel 
soldier who says, 

" I am a Southerner, 
I loved the South and dared for her 
To fight from Lookout to the sea 
With her proud banner over me. " 

stood before the ranks of the Grand Army and 
spoke these words : 

" I stand and say that you were right ; 
I greet you with uncovered head, 
Remembering many a thundrous fight 
When whistling death between us sped ; 
I clasp the hand that made my scars, 
I cheer the flag my foemen bore, 
I shout for joy to see the stars 
All on our common shield once more." 

This was more than a quarter of a century ago, 
and all this time the great loyal South had, 
patiently and unflinchingly accepted war's terri- 
ble results. It is not strange, then, that she 
shows her loyalty to-day. The " Solid South," 
the bugaboo of politicians, the cloak of Northern 
venality, has passed away forever. The warm 
response to American courage, in whatever 



" LEST WE FORGETS 1 29 

section or party, shows that with all our surface 
divisions, we of America are one in heart. And 
this very solidarity should make us pause before 
entering upon a career of militarism. Unforget- 
ting, open-eyed, counting all the cost, let us 
make our decision. The Federal Republic, the 
Imperial Republic — which shall it be ? 

The policing of far-off islands, the maintenance 
of the machinery of imperialism, are petty things 
beside the duties which the higher freedom 
brings. To turn to these empty and showy 
affairs is to neglect our own business for the 
gossip of our neighbors. Such work may be a 
matter of necessity ; it should not be a source of 
pride. The political greatness of England has 
never lain in her navies nor the force of her 
arms. It has lain in her struggles for individual 
freedom. Not Marlborough, nor Nelson, nor 
Wellington is its exponent, let us say, rather, 
Pym and Hampden, and Gladstone and Bright. 
The real problems of England have always been 
at home. The pomp of imperialism, the display 
of naval power, the commercial control of India 
and China — all these are as the bread and 
circuses by which the Roman emperors held the 
mob from their thrones. They keep the people 
busy and put off the day of final reckoning. 
" Gild the dome of the Invalides," was Napo- 
leon's cynical command when he learned that the 
people of Paris were becoming desperate. 



1 30 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO -DA Y. 

A foe is always at the gates of a nation with a 
vigorous foreign policy. The British nation is 
hated and feared of all nations except our own. 
Only her eternal vigilance keeps the vultures 
from her coasts. Eternal vigilance of this sort 
will strengthen governments, will build up 
nations; it will not in like degree make men. 
The day of the nations as nations is passing. 
National ambitions, national hopes, national 
aggrandizements ; all these may become public 
nuisances. Imperialism, like feudalism, belongs 
to the past. The men of the world as men, not 
as nations, are drawing closer together. The 
needs of commerce are stronger than the will of 
nations, and the final guarantee of peace and 
good will among men will be not " the parlia- 
ment of nations," but the self-control of men. 

Some great changes in our system are inevit- 
able, and belong to the course of natural progress. 
Against them I have nothing to say. Whatever 
our part in the affairs of the world, we should 
play it manfully. But with all this I believe 
that the movement toward broad dominion 
would be a step downward. It would be to turn 
from our highest purposes to drift with the 
current of " manifest destiny." It would be not 
to do the work of America, but to follow the 
ways of the rest of the world. 

" God of our fathers, known of old — 
Lord of our far-flung battle line — 



PIETY AND CIVIC VIRTUE. I3I 

Beneath whose awful Hand we hold 
Dominion over palm and pine ; 
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
Lest we forget, lest we forget. 

The tumult and the shouting dies, 
The captains and the kings depart — 
Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice, 
An humble and a contrite heart. 
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
Lest we forget, lest we forget. 

Far-called our navies melt away — 
On dune and headland sinks the fire — 
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday, 
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre ! 
Judge of the nations, spare us yet, 
Lest we forget, lest we forget." 



Piety and Civic Virtue. 

Charles Henry Parkhurst, D.D, 
Used by permission of Dr. Parkhurst. 

The fault with the mass of civic virtue is that 
there is not enough Christian live coal in it to 
make it safe to be counted on for solid effects. 
What a wicked man will do on election day you 
can tell. What a good man will do you cannot 
tell. Most likely he will not do anything. It is 
a singular fact that goodness cannot be so con- 



132 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

fidently trusted as depravity can to do what is 
expected of it. It is not so reliable. It takes a 
larger consideration to prevent a bad man from 
casting his ballot for rum than it does to prevent 
a good man from going and voting against it. 

Average decency is not so much in earnest as 
average profligacy. Elections in city and State 
are very likely to turn on the weather. Singu- 
larly enough a watery day is apt to mean a rum 
government. Respectability looks at the ba r 
rometer before it steps out of doors. Decency is 
afraid of taking cold. Piety does not like to get 
its feet wet. Wickedness is amphibious and 
thrives in any element or in no element. There 
are a good many lessons which the powers of 
darkness are competent to teach the children of 
light, and that is one of them. Vice is a good 
deal spryer than virtue, has more staying power, 
can work longer without getting out of breath, 
and has less need of half-holidays. 

I know because of this, people say, you 
can't do anything. You can. One man can 
chase a thousand ; we have the Almighty's 
word for it. Any man can do it be he Catho- 
lic, Republican, or Democrat, if he have the 
truth on his side, dares to stand up and tell 
it, is distinguished by consecrated hang-to-itive- 
ness, and when he has been knocked down once 
preserves his serenity, gets up, and goes at it 
again. One man can chase a thousand. Let 



PIETY AND CIVIC VIRTUE. 1 33 

our earnest, fiery citizens once get but an inkling 
of what citizenship means, in its truest and inner- 
most sense, and there is no wall of misrule 
too solidly constructed for it to overthrow ; 
no " machine " of demagogism too elaborately 
wrought for it to smash. There is nothing that 
can stand in the way of virtue on fire. A fact 
you can misstate, a principle you can put under 
a false guise, but a man you cannot down ; that 
is to say, if he is a man who has grit, grace, and 
sleeps well o' nights. 

There is no play about this work ; there is no 
fun in it. It means annoyances ; it means 
enmities. It is no more possible to stand up in 
the presence of the community and speak the 
truth in cold monosyllables now than it was in 
Jerusalem two thousand years ago. Human 
nature has not altered any in that time. There 
is not so much wickedness now, perhaps, as there 
was then, but what there is is just as wicked and 
just as malignant. If a man butts his head 
against a wall, he may be able to do a little 
something towards weakening the wall, but it 
will be certain to give him the headache. Action 
and reaction are bound to be equal. Nothing 
less than the steady pull of a long and devout 
purpose will be sufficient under those circum- 
stances to keep the man a-going. 

Men now are precisely what they were when 
they thrust Jeremiah into a hole and took off the 



1 34 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

head of John the Baptist. But that makes not 
a whit of difference. Every blow tells. Wicked- 
ness is cowardly and Pentecostal virtue is not. 
That makes a huge difference. The matter of 
numbers does not come into the account. His- 
tory is not administered on the basis of arithme- 
tic. The declaration of Solomon that the battle 
is not to the strong has been justified by every 
age of moral, political, and military history. 

No cause can be called a weak cause that has 
vitality enough about it to make devotees out of 
its advocates. Philip Second could do nothing 
with poor little Holland because the Protestant's 
idea put recruits on their feet faster than Philip's 
mercenaries could shoot or roast the veterans. 

If any one anywhere is anxious to accomplish 
something in the way of ameliorating the condi- 
tion of his town or city, and asks me what he 
shall do, I answer in ten words : Get the facts ; 
state them ; stand up to them. 



Abraham Lincoln. 

Benjamin Harrison. 

Copyright, 1901, by the Bowen-Merrill Co. Used by per- 
mission. 

The observance of the birthday of Abraham 
Lincoln, which has become now so widely estab- 
lished, either by public law or by general custom, 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 1 35 

will more and more force the orators of these 
occasions to depart from the line of biography 
and incident and eulogy, and to assume the du- 
ties of applying to pending public questions the 
principles illustrated in the life, and taught in 
the public utterances of the man whose birth we 
commemorate. 

And, after all, we may be sure that that great, 
simple-hearted patriot would have wished it so. 
Flattery did not soothe the living ear of Lincoln. 
He was not unappreciative of friendship, not 
without ambition to be esteemed, but the over- 
mastering and dominant thought of his life was 
to be useful to his country and to his country- 
men. 

On his way to take up the already stupendous 
work of the presidency, he spent a night at 
Indianapolis. The arrival of his train was greeted 
by many thousands of those who had supported 
his candidacy. They welcomed him with huzzas, 
as if they would give him token of their purpose 
to stand by the results declared at the poles. 
Yet it seemed hardly to be a glad crowd, and he 
not to be a glad man. There was no sense of 
culpability — either in their hearts or in his ; no 
faltering; no disposition to turn back, but the 
hour was shadowed with forebodings. 

Men did not shrink, but there was that vague 
sense of apprehension, that unlocated expectancy 
of evil, which fills the air and disturbs the beasts 



1 36 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

of the field when the unclouded sun is eclipsed. 
When the column is once started in the charge 
there are cheers, but there is a moment when, 
standing at attention, silence is king. 

There stood our chosen leader, the man who 
was to be our pilot through seas more stormy 
and through channels more perilous than ever 
the old ship passed before. He had piloted the 
lumbering flatboat on our western streams, but 
he was now to take the helm of the great ship. 
His experience in public office had been brief, 
and not conspicuous. He had no general ac- 
quaintance with the people of the whole country. 
His large, angular frame and face, his broad 
humor, his homely illustrations and simple ways, 
seemed to very many of his fellow-countrymen 
to portray a man and a mind that, while acute 
and powerful, had not that nice balance and 
touch of statecraft, that the perilous way before 
us demanded. No college of arts had opened to 
his struggling youth ; he had been born in a 
cabin, and reared among the unlettered. He 
was a rail-splitter, a flatboatman, a country lawyer. 

Yet in all these conditions and associations, 
he was a leader — at the railsplitting, in the 
rapids, at the bar, in story telling. He had a 
comparatively small body of admiring and at- 
tached friends. He had revealed himself in his 
debate with Douglas and in his New York speech 
as a man most familiar with American politics 



A BRA HA M LINCOLN. 1 3 7 

and a profound student of our institutions, but 
above all, as a man of conscience — most kind in 
speech, and most placid in demeanor, yet dis- 
turbing the public peace by his insistence that 
those theories of human rights which we had all 
so much applauded in theory should be made 
practical. 

In the broad, common-sense way in which he 
did small things he was larger than any situation 
in which life had placed him. Europe did not 
know him. To the South and to many in the 
Northern States he was an uncouth jester, an 
ambitious upstart, a reckless disturber. He was 
hated by the South, not only for his principles, 
but for himself. The son of the cavalier, the 
man who felt toil to be a stain, despised this son 
of the people, this child of toil. He was going 
to Washington to meet misgivings in his own 
party, and to confront the fiercest, most implaca- 
ble and powerful rebellion of which history gives 
us an example. Personal dangers attended his 
journey. The course before him was lighted 
only by the lamp of duty : outside its radiance all 
was dark. 

He seemed to be conscious of all this, to be 
weighted by it ; but so strong was his sense of 
duty, so courageous his heart, so sure was he of 
his own high purposes and motives and of the 
favor of God for himself and his people, that he 
moved forward calmly to his appointed work ; 



138 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OE TO-DAY. 

not with show and brag, neither with shrinking. 
He was yet in a large measure to win the con- 
fidence of men in his capacity, when the occasion 
was so exigent as to seem to call for one who 
had already won it. 

The selection of Mr. Seward for Secretary of 
State was a brave act, because Mr. Lincoln could 
not fail to know that for a time Mr. Seward 
would overshadow him in the popular estima- 
tion ; and a wise one, because Mr. Seward was in 
the highest degree qualified for the great and 
delicate duties of the office. 

He was distinguished from the abolition lead- 
ers by the fairness and kindliness with which he 
judged the South and the slaveholder. He was 
opposed to human slavery, not because some 
masters were cruel, but upon reasons that kind- 
ness to the slave did not answer. "All men" 
included the black man. Liberty is the law of 
nature. The human enactment cannot pass the 
limits of the State ; God's law embraces crea- 
tion. 

Mr. Lincoln had faith in time, and time has 
justified his faith. If the panorama of the years 
from '6i to '65 could have been unrolled 
before the eyes of his countrymen would they 
have said, would he have said, that he was ade- 
quate for the great occasion ? And yet as we 
look back over the story of the Civil War he is 
revealed to us standing above all men of that 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 139 

epoch in his capacity and adaptation to the 
duties of the presidency. 

It does not seem to be God's way to give men 
preparation and fitness and to reveal them until 
the hour strikes. Men must rise to the situa- 
tion. The storage batteries that are to furnish 
the energy for these great occasions God does 
not connect until the occasion comes. 

The Civil War called for a president who had 
faith in time, for his country as well as for him- 
self ; who could endure the impatience of others 
and bide his time. A man who could by a 
strong but restrained diplomatic correspondency 
hold off foreign intermeddlers and at the same 
time lay the sure basis for the Geneva award, a 
man who could in all his public utterances, while 
maintaining the authority of the law and the 
just rights of the national government, breathe 
an undertone of yearning for the misguided and 
rebellious ; a man who could hold the war and 
the policy of the government to its original pur- 
pose — the restoration of the States without the 
destruction of slavery — until public sentiment 
was ready to support a proclamation of emanci- 
pation ; a man who could win and hold the love 
of the soldier and of the masses of the people ; a 
man who could be just without pleasure in the 
severities of justice, who loved to forgive and 
pardon. 

Mr. Lincoln loved the " plain people " out of 



I4-0 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

whose ranks be came, but not with a class love. 
He never pandered to ignorance or sought ap- 
plause by appeals to prejudice. The equality 
of men in rights and burdens, justice to all, a 
government by all the people, for all the people, 
was his thought — no favoritism in enactment or 
administration — the general good. 

He had the love of the masses and he won it 
fairly, not by art or trick. He could, therefore, 
admonish and restrain with authority. He was 
a man who could speak to all men and be heard. 
Would there were more such ! There is great 
need of men now who can be heard both in the 
directors' meetings and in the labor assembly. 

Qualities of heart and mind combined to make 
a man who has won the love of mankind. He 
stands like a great lighthouse to show the way of 
duty to all his countrymen and to send afar a 
beam of courage to those who beat against the 
winds. We do him reverence. We bless forever 
the memory of Lincoln. 



Commerce. 

Henry Van Dyke, D.D., LL.D. 

THERE is a nobility of trade which has its 
traditions of glory, its laws of honor, its history 
of usefulness, and its purpose of beneficence to 



COMMERCE. 141 

all mankind. There is an order of the Golden 
Fleece to which the world owes its greatest dis- 
coveries and its largest advances in civilization. 
It was founded in the palmy days of Greece, but 
it has survived to the present day, and we need 
not look far to find its knights of labor, of ad- 
venture, of honor, and of generous succor to the 
oppressed. 

Who sneers at commerce ? Is it the lover of 
liberty ? Let him remember that the grandest 
battles for freedom have been fought by mer- 
cantile nations. It was commercial Holland that 
defied the tyranny of Spain ; it was the merchant- 
men of England that shattered the Armada on 
the stormy waters of the channel ; it was a band 
of trading colonies that set up the standard of 
liberty in the new world ; and but for the freely 
offered wealth — and the nobly sacrificed lives — 
of our mercantile classes, I leave it to you to say, 
whether our new Republic would not now be dis- 
membered and dishonored. 

Who sneers at commerce ? Is it the devotee 
of learning? Let him remember that it was the 
traders of Phoenicia who gave letters to Greece ; 
it was the maritime states of Greece who adorned 
the world with poetry, and philosophy, and art ; 
it was the age of England's commercial suprem- 
acy which brought the highest glory to her uni- 
versities ; it is in great part the liberality of 
merchants which has established on our shores 



142 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

these great institutions of learning, — Harvard, 
Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell. Let him 
remember the little commercial city of Leyden, 
and her imperishable example. For when her 
heroic siege was ended — when she had won her 
unparalleled victories against armies, ships, 
canon, pestilence, flood, and famine — when the 
Prince of Orange in his unbounded gratitude 
came and asked her to choose her reward — that 
little city of Dutch merchants chose not gold, nor 
freedom from taxes, but a university, and the 
reward of her defense became the light of Europe. 

Who sneers at commerce ? Is it the friend of 
peace ? Let him remember that commerce has 
created and established the system of inter- 
national law ; that there is no spot of land to- 
day upon which the rights of property and person 
are more secure than upon the high seas. Let 
him remember that " every ship that sails the 
ocean is a pledge of peace to the extent of its 
value ; every white sail a more appropriate sym- 
bol of peace than the olive-branch itself." 

Who sneers at commerce? Is it the preacher 
of Christianity ? Let him remember that it was 
the trade of Thessalonica which caused the 
Gospel to sound forth from that city into all the 
world ; it was the enterprise of commerce which 
opened the closed gates of China, and Japan, and 
Corea to the missionary, and made possible those 
triumphant advances of Christianity of which we 



OUR NATIONAL SAFEGUARDS. 1 43 

are beginning to hear the first footfalls, and for 
whose completion we must look to the conse- 
crated wealth of mercantile communities. Let 
the Church understand her opportunity, and her 
task. Convert commerce and you have found 
" the Knight-errant of the Cross." Convince those 
who reap the honorable gains of trade that their 
wealth has its sacred obligations, as well as its 
great privileges, that the richest man is not he 
who has the most money, but he who makes the 
best use of what he has, that great possessions 
are a royal trust from God to be employed for 
the benefit of mankind, and then the noble order 
of true commerce will become the transforming 
and uplifting power of our modern civilization. 



Our National Safeguards. 

Hon. Chauncey M. Depew. 
Contributed by the author. 

It requires only a brief contemplation of 
American battle-fields to illustrate the madness 
or the idiocy of the statesmen who would frighten 
us by the dangers which they claim threaten 
our security or peace from foreign assault or 
foreign invasion. Thirty thousand American 
soldiers conquered Mexico, with twelve millions 



144 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

of inhabitants. It was American bravery, intelli- 
gence and dash. Three millions of people threw 
off the yoke of the British Government, though 
England was mistress of the seas and the arbiter 
of Europe. Hooker's men stormed the almost 
impregnable heights of Lookout Mountain, and 
won a victory above the clouds, while Pickett's 
brigade of the Confederate Army hurled them- 
selves with unavailing valor upon the breastworks 
and died under the murderous fire of the batter- 
ies of Meade at Gettysburg. There are in the 
United States to-day a reserve of ten millions of 
fighting men. They are the same stock, with the 
same bravery and the same unconquerable spirit 
as those who fought from Bunker Hill to York- 
town, who won the victory under Jackson at 
New Orleans, who followed Scott and Taylor 
into Mexico, and stormed the heights of Chapul- 
tepec, and marched triumphantly into the City of 
the Montezumas. They are of the same stock 
and spirit, the same courage and fearlessness of 
death as the soldiers who won the admiration of 
the French and English officers on the staffs of 
General Grant and General Lee in those conflicts 
of the Civil War, where five hundred thousand 
men died in battle. Those soldiers require no 
standing army for their safety, no expensive, 
exhausting and threatening militarism for the 
salvation or the defense of their country. They 
will take care of that themselves. It is for us to 



O UR NA TIONA L SA FE G UA RDS. 1 4 5 

preserve the glorious heritage for which these 
men died or were wounded, or are now maimed 
and helpless in our midst. Our duty is to care 
tenderly and piously for the survivors of the 
Grand Army, and to carry out in policy, in prin- 
ciple and in practice the ideas for which they 
fought. Their triumph gave to the Republic the 
new South. It substituted for the old oligarchy 
and slavery the superb development which comes 
with individual enterprise and free labor. The 
new South is redeeming its wildernesses for pop- 
ulation and homes ; it is reclaiming its waste 
lands for the varied productions of its fructifying 
climate. It is bringing out the exhaustless 
treasures of its mountains and hills ; it is estab- 
lishing manufactories, founding cities and adding 
its quota to the majesty, the power and the 
greatness of the United States. We must be 
true and faithful in safeguarding the ballot-box 
and the right of the citizen to deposit his vote 
and have it honestly recorded. We must be 
courageous in fighting the madness of the hour 
or the errors which increase with business 
depression and hard times, and go with our 
party into temporary defeat, if need be, for the 
preservation of the national credit, and those 
principles of sound finance and practice, common 
with the commercial nations of the world, and 
which alone can keep us solvent, prosperous and 
progressive. From Columbus to the Mayflower, 



I46 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

from the Mayflower to Washington and the 
Declaration of Independence, from Washington 
and the Declaration of Independence to Lincoln 
and the Emancipation Proclamation are the 
stepping-stones of American liberty and modern 
development. The crowning blessing of this 
majestic evolution is that American citizenship 
which is the common heritage of us all. 



Social Discontent. 

Hon. John William Griggs. 
Used by permission of the author. 

This great country, the United States of 
America, has grown into an independent nation. 
It has advanced and extended along the lines 
of progress and prosperity until the seven 
wonders of the world have been lost sight of and 
forgotten in the thousand greater wonders of 
this industrial age. Education has become a 
common provision of every State for every child 
of the Republic. Intelligence has increased ; 
reason and reasonableness, the ability to take 
right views of things has become more universal 
among this people than among the people of 
any other land. The average of comfort and 
prosperity is higher among all classes in this 



SOCIAL DISCONTENT. 1 47 

country than could be found at any other age of 
the world and in any other land upon the surface 
of the earth. 

And yet there are complaints, there are dis- 
contents, there are dissatisfactions, and gloomy 
minds think they see, in these, evidences and 
signs that there is coming a social revolution, an 
overturning of our system of popular government, 
a substitution for it of some plan whereby, by 
legal enactments, all citizens of the Republic can 
be made comfortable and rich, without regard 
to fortune, or ability, or frugality, or merit. 

In one sense discontent is a good thing. It is 
the opposite of self-satisfaction. It is a good 
thing to appreciate that we have not done our 
best and then try to do it. It is a good thing to 
understand that we have not made the most of 
our opportunities. In this sense discontent is 
the spur of ambition, the incentive to better 
work, the mountain of progress up which from 
height to height, civilization has climbed to 
where now with shining face she stands still 
pointing upward to heights unknown. But 
there is another kind of discontent, born of an 
inclination to jealousy and envy, that seeks not 
to repair its mistakes, nor to profit by its failures, 
nor to build up, but to tear down. There is 
among many a sense of hopelessness over hope- 
less misfortune, and with these, it is more to pity 
than to blame. But, after all, in these discon- 



148 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

tents, there is a menace to the Republic. They 
afford opportunities for the demagogue and cheap 
candidate for public office. Glory to the Ameri- 
can people. They cannot be fooled all of the 
time nor some of the time. They are too level- 
headed, too intelligent, too patriotic to be caught 
by appeals of the demagogue and social revolu- 
tionist, to the dictates of sentiments of envy, 
hatred and malice. 

There are some ways by which it is best for us 
to minimize the danger we find in these discon- 
tents. The first remedy is the one that is to be 
ever applied — education. Reduce the percentage 
of illiteracy. Let the public schools teach not 
only reading and writing, but let the public 
schools teach all the principles of American 
popular government. Let us go back to the 
days in which the copybook bore the text taken 
from Poor Richard — " Industry and Frugality 
lead to wealth," or " Who by the plow would 
thrive, himself must either hold or drive." 
There was not anything said in those days about 
legislating the boy into wealth or comfort or 
ease, especially at the expense of anybody else. 

Then let us have more mutual sympathy and 
confidence between all classes and conditions of 
men. The man who works for wages day by 
day is our equal in rights and is our equal at the 
ballot box. Very often he has, generally he has, 
as high instincts, as loyal and true a heart, as 



SOCIAL DISCONTENT. 149 

his employer. There is no reason why his 
employer or the candidate for office or anybody 
else should make friends with him only at 
election time. Be his friend all the year round. 
Show him that you sympathize with him as a 
fellow citizen. This is not a condescension, it is 
his right. It is not altruism. 

But let there be confidence between men that 
earn wages and men that pay wages. Let them 
meet together on a plane of political equality, 
and they will learn to respect the employer and 
the employer will learn to respect them. Then, 
let us stop making citizens out of unworthy 
material. We welcome all those that come from 
over the sea, men of merit and worth and proper 
instinct, who want to build and work among 
us. We do not want those who only come here 
to tear down and destroy. We have had the 
gates wide open. They have been coming in — 
all sorts, all conditions and all beliefs. Let us 
shut those gates and open them hereafter only 
to men of merit with right instincts. The law of 
the land declares that no subject of any foreign 
government shall be naturalized unless he can 
prove, to the satisfaction of the court, that he 
lias been well attached to the principles of the 
Constitution of the United States. How that 
provision has been ignored ! Why, we have 
taken into citizenship with us thousands of men 
who not only are not attached to the principles 



1 50 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

of the Constitution of the United States, who 
not only do not know what those principles are, 
but who hold principles diametrically opposed to 
it. Now let us see that America suffers no 
longer from the surfeited feast of foreign Anar- 
chists and Socialists and Revolutionists ; give us 
good men and true who will not impede our 
industry and keep out those that tend to des- 
troy industry. 

And then let every citizen go into politics. 
Not for what there is in it but for the good of 
his country. Rally round the flag and keep on 
rallying ! It is a very old saying but can never 
be too often repeated, that " Eternal vigilance is 
the prize of liberty." 



William McKinley. 

G. Stanley Hall, LL. D. 

President of Clark University. Contributed to this collec- 
tion by the author. 

When Rome was declining to its fall, and 
Otho, the best of her later emperors, died, 
strong men slew themselves from sheer grief, 
pathos and despair, for the hope of the world 
seemed extinguished in a gathering twilight of 
all the gods and men. But for our ship of state, 
acute as it is, this sudden shock is ' of the wave 



WILLIAM McKINLE Y. 1 5 I 

and not the rock,' for God reigns, the govern- 
ment is safe, and we shall press on our upward 
way. 

The country we love is not a mere geo- 
graphical term ; it is more than all our rich fields, 
prairies, hills, coasts or populous cities. It is 
more than a corporation, or trading guild, with 
its manifold and prosperous marts and all its 
trade and commerce. Our fatherland is also a 
State invisible, not made with hands, a great 
treasury of golden deeds. Its moral wealth and 
worth are enriched by the blood of every soldier 
or martyr for a century and a quarter. It is 
made more precious by every act of devotion, 
heroism or self-sacrifice in its behalf. Every 
vote with intelligence and conviction behind it : 
every tax fairly levied, ungrudgingly paid and 
wisely expended ; every public service that takes 
time and strength from our private affairs ; every 
effort for municipal, educational, moral or social 
reform, enhances the common wealth, the store- 
house of accumulated virtue, makes citizenship 
and country better and mean more, makes a 
purer and more quickening atmosphere for chil- 
dren to grow up in and for us to live and die in. 

Man is pre-eminently a political creature, 
a State builder, and true and real politics is, as 
Aristotle well said, his highest vocation. Our 
great Republic, the highest expression of human- 
ity, with all its hopes and all its fears which his- 



152 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DAY. 

tory has yet seen, is worthy of the very highest 
earthly love, service and devotion of man ; and 
our flag that now happily hangs in or waves be- 
side every schoolhouse in the land, that has 
floated in every battle since Lexington, which 
has been torn with shot and shell, and led every 
forlorn hope that our soldiers have so often 
turned into victory, is the emblem of a meaning 
ever fuller and more sacred, that says to every 
citizen wherever he is, that he is not alone, but 
part of the great organic whole, which men have 
died to make free, even as Christ died to make 
men holy. 

If then ours is the noblest of nations, best 
fitted to usher in a higher type of man, anarchism, 
which is well defined as ' ignorance set on fire,' 
and which would destroy all this and all govern- 
ment without which man becomes a beast, is 
blackest here where institutions are best. Bred 
and maddened by despotism, even its desperate 
program should lose its fell momentum here and 
turn from mere negation to some positive or 
colonial scheme where its vagaries would grow 
harmless. In all the sad annals of assassination, 
a monster, who almost in the act of grasping the 
friendly hand which our land in the person of 
its benign Chief holds out to the vilest, shoots 
down our Captain Great Heart, as if he were an 
outlaw, adds to politics a new shudder of horror 
and pathos and commits a crime without a name, 



WILLIAM McKINLE Y. 1 5 3 

and all direct incitement to such butchery, legisla- 
tion should hasten to brand with the infamous 
punishment it deserves. 

As the office of President grows in responsi- 
bility, it not only needs more protection, but is 
surer to enlarge the man who holds it and to 
bring out the best and greatest possibilities of 
his nature and repress all that is small or bad, as 
indeed it has always done in our past, for no in- 
cumbent has ever disgraced it. Under the guid- 
ance of him we mourn, we have secured sound 
money and a business prosperity greater than 
ever before. We were already the great nation 
of the new world, but now in the irresistible 
logic of events we have become a potent factor in 
all the larger problems of the old. Before, our 
statesmen pondered our own history and per- 
haps that of the mother country, but to guide 
the genius and destinies of our greater Republic, 
they must now study the history and politics of 
the world. Our moral influence had long been 
profound and transforming, but we have added 
to this new and more material international re- 
sponsibilities and opportunities in commerce and 
politics as we take a higher seat in the world's 
great parliament. Whether it is hard or easy, 
we must now in a measure forget the things that 
are behind, while we strive to realize the grand 
Stoic motto and accept the inevitable with joy. 
For we now live in a nation greater than any of 



I 54 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

the founders of our government foresaw, and even 
their wisdom must be transcended, warmly as its 
lessons must ever be cherished. 

Pheidippides, the valiant warrior chief of 
ancient Greece, after a great victory, ran to the 
Acropolis, outstripping all others in the race ; 
and in the very act of shouting " rejoice for 
Athens is now free and great," fell dead, ex- 
hausted by his labor, by a special favor of the 
gods, who would permit him no decline, but, for 
reward, let him die at the zenith of his power. 
So our leader had just recounted almost with his 
last words the achievements of his stewardship, 
that made our country greater and happier, even 
on the dreadful brink of the red grave to which 
he sank, exhausted perhaps by his labors be- 
yond the power of recovery from his wounds, 
and it may be by special favor of the gods. 

Perhaps his work was done. Can we better 
keep his memory warm in our hearts and green 
in our lives than by now pledging each other, 
when a touch of sorrow has made us all akin, that 
we will henceforth love and serve our native land 
more devoutly ; that, while we can and will abate 
none of our convictions, our partisanship shall 
henceforth be without the sting of personal ran- 
cor ; that we will be mindful that bitterness may 
inflame the weak or degenerate to violence ; that 
this day shall be forever sacred to the common 
good for which our government and civilization 



THE MAN WITH HIS HA T IN HIS HAND. 1 5 5 

stand ; and to that deeper unity that underlies 
all differences of calling, class, party and creed, 
and which makes all men everywhere brethren, 
because children of the same God? If we do 
this henceforth, it is only ashes they bury at 
Canton, and the soul of our fallen chieftain will 
go marching on through the ages ; it will abide 
with us as a diffusing power that makes for civic 
righteousness, and harmony and order will be no 
less insured than liberty and progress. 



" The Man with His Hat in His Hand." 

Clark Howell. 
Abridged. 

The Twenty-ninth Regiment of United States 
Volunteers, was quartered at Atlanta, Georgia. 
They had just received orders for their trip of 10, 
ooo miles. The troops were formed in full regi- 
mental parade in the presence of thousands of spec- 
tators, among whom were anxious and weeping 
mothers, loving sisters and sweethearts, and a 
vast multitude of others who had gone to look, 
possibly for the last time, upon departing friends. 
Of the enlisted men a great percentage were 
from Georgia, most of them from simple farm- 
houses and the quiet and unpretentious hearth- 
stones which abound in the rural communities. 



I56 BEST AMERICAN OR A 7 IONS OF TO-DA V. 

A few had seen service in Cuba, but most of 
them had volunteered as raw recruits from the 
farm. There were sturdy and rugged mountain- 
eers from the Blue Ridge counties — strong, 
steady and intrepid, with the simplicity charac- 
teristic of the mountain fastnesses from which 
they came. There were boys from the wire grass 
— plain, unassuming and unaffected, their eyes 
lighted with the fire of determination and their 
hearts beating in unison with the loyalty of their 
purpose. The men moved like machines. The 
regiment of raw recruits had become in a few 
months a command of trained and disciplined 
soldiers. The very air was fraught with the 
impressive significance of the scene, which had 
its counterpart in many of the States where 
patriots enlisted faster than the muster roll was 
called. 

Leaning against a tree was a white-haired 
mountaineer who looked with intent eyes and 
with an expression of the keenest sympathy 
upon the movements of the men in uniform. 
His gaze was riveted on the regiment and the 
frequent applause of the visiting multitude fell 
apparently unheard on his ears. The regiment 
had finished its evolutions ; the commissioned 
officers had lined themselves to make their regu- 
lation march to the front for their report and 
dismissal. The bugler had sounded the signal ; 
the artillery had belched its adieu as the king of 



THE MAN WITH HIS HA T IN HIS HAND. 157 

day withdrew beyond the hills ; the halyard had 
been grasped, and the flag slowly fell, saluting 
the retiring sun. As the flag started its descent, 
the scene was characterized by a solemnity that 
seemed sacred in its intensity. From the regi- 
mental band there floated upon the stillness of 
the autumn evening the strains of the " Star 
Spangled Banner." Instinctively and apparently 
unconsciously, the old man by the tree removed 
his hat from his head and held it in his hand in 
reverential recognition until the flag had been 
furled and the last strain of the national anthem 
had been lost in the resonant tramp of the troops 
as they left the field. 

What a picture that was — the man with his 
hat in his hand, as he stood uncovered during 
that impressive ceremony ! I moved involunta- 
rily toward him, and, impressed with his reveren- 
tial attitude, I asked him where he was from. 
" I am," said he, " from Pickens County ; " and 
in casual conversation it developed that this raw 
mountaineer had come to Atlanta to say farewell 
to an only son who stood in line before him, 
and upon whom his tear-bedimmed eyes might 
then be resting for the last time. The silent ex- 
hibition of patriotism and loyalty had been 
prompted by a soul as rugged, but as placid as 
the great blue mountains which gave it birth, 
and by an inspiration kindled from the very 
bosom of nature itself. 



I 58 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

There was the connecting link between the 
hearthstone and the capitol ! There was the 
citizen who, representing the only real, substan- 
tial element of the nation's reserve strength — 
" the citizen standing in the doorway of his 
home, contented on his threshold " had answered 
his country's call — the man of whom Henry 
Grady so eloquently said : " He shall save the 
Republic when the drum tap is futile and the 
barracks are exhausted." In him was duty 
typified, and in him slumbered the germ of sac- 
rifice. There was that in the spontaneous action 
of the man that spoke of hardships to be endur- 
ed and dangers to be dared for country's sake ; 
there was that in his reverential attitude that 
said, even though the libation of his heart's 
blood should be required in far off lands, his life 
would be laid down as lightly as his hat was 
lifted to his country's call. Denied by age the 
privilege of sharing the hardships and the 
dangers of the comrades of his boy, no rule 
could regulate his patriotic ardor, no limitation 
could restrain the instincts of his homage. 



The Cure for Anarchism. 

Lyman Abbott, D.D. 
Contributed by Dr. Abbott to this collection. 

WHENEVER laws are enacted which violate the 
divine laws of life, they breed Anarchy. Anarch- 



THE CURE FOR ANARCHISM. 1 59 

ism is always a revolt against unjust and unequal 
laws. Let the legislators recognize the funda- 
mental truth that what is an injury to one is an 
injury to all, and what is a benefit to the many is 
a benefit to all ; let them seek only the welfare 
of all by their legislation ; let them recognize the 
truth that law is divine and to set the Nation 
against it is to invite disaster and to conform the 
Nation to it is to insure prosperity, and we shall 
have little cause to ask, What shall we do with 
Anarchy ? — it will disappear of itself. On the 
contrary, let legislators legislate for special 
classes, let them encourage by their legislation 
the spoliation of the many for the benefit of the 
few, let them protect the rich and forget the 
poor, let them estimate the prosperity of the 
Nation by the accumulation of its wealth, not by 
its distribution, let them intrench an industrial 
system which means long hours, and little leisure, 
and small rewards for the many, and accumula- 
tion of unimagined wealth for the few, and men 
in the bitterness of their hearts will cry out, If 
this is government, let us away with it. 

But just and equal laws will not be enough 
without just and equal execution of those laws. 
Let the courts delay to administer justice, let the 
rich be enabled to keep the poor waiting till their 
patience and their purses are alike exhausted, let 
crimes go unpunished until they are forgotten, 
let the petty gambler be arrested but the rich 



l6o BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

and prosperous one go free, and Anarchism will 
demand the abolition of all law because it sees in 
law only an instrument of injustice. 

The place in which to attack Anarchism is 
where the offenses grow which alone make 
Anarchism possible. Let us secure the just, 
speedy, and impartial administration of law, let 
us elect legislators who seek honestly to conform 
human legislation to the divine laws of the social 
order, without fear or favor, let us teach in our 
Churches and our schools and through the press 
the divine origin, the divine sanctity, and the 
divine authority of law, and let us from this van- 
tage-ground meet with fair-minded reason the 
wild cries of men who have been taught by the 
monstrous misuse of law to hate all law both 
human and divine, and our question will be 
solved for us, because both Anarchy and Anar- 
chists will disappear from American society. The 
way to counteract hostility to law is to make 
laws which deserve to be respected. 



Expansion. 

Hon. Henry L. Watterson. 

The traditional stay-at-home and mind-your- 
own-business policy laid down by Washington 



EXPANSION. l6l 

was wise for a weak and struggling nation, and, if 
it could be adhered to, would be wise for every 
people. But each of the centuries has its own 
tale of progress to tell, each raises up its own 
problems to be solved. The difference between 
a scattered population, fringing the east Atlantic 
seaboard, and eighty millions of people occupying 
and traversing the Continent from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific, is too great to admit of contrast. 

As no preceding cycle the intervening century 
has revolutionized the world. Another century 
may witness the transfer of human ambitions and 
activities from Europe and America to Asia and 
Africa. The Pacific, and not the Atlantic, may 
become the washbasin of the universe. Can the 
United States stand apart and aside while these 
movements of mankind, like a running stream, 
pass them by, an isolated and helpless mass of 
accumulated and corrupting riches ? We could 
not if we would and we should not if we could. 

We must adapt ourselves to the changed order. 
We must make a new map. The vista, as it 
opens to our sight, is not so great as would have 
been the vista of Texas and California, Florida 
and Alaska to the eye of Washington. For all 
his wisdom the father of his country could not 
foresee electricity, nor estimate the geographic 
contractions it would bring. Already the old 
world is receding. Another world is coming into 
view. The statesmanship of the twentieth cen- 



1 62 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

tury, must address itself to this and will be 
largely constructive in its character. 

The United States from now on is destined to 
be a world power. Henceforth its foreign policy 
will need to be completely reconstructed. From 
a nation of shopkeepers we become a nation of 
warriors. We escape the menace and peril of 
socialism and agrarianism, as England has escaped 
them, by a policy of colonization and conquest. 
From a provincial huddle of petty sovereignties, 
held together by a rope of sand, we rise to the 
dignity and prowess of an Imperial Republic in- 
comparably greater than Rome. 

It is true that we exchange domestic dangers 
for foreign dangers, but in every direction we 
multiply the opportunities of the people. We 
risk Caesarism, certainly ; but even Caesarism is 
preferable to anarchism. We risk wars, but a 
man has but one time to die, and, either in peace 
or war, he is not likely to die until his time comes. 
In short, anything is better than the pace we 
were going before these present forces were 
started into life. Already the young manhood 
of the country is as a goodly brand snatched from 
the burning and given a perspective replete with 
noble deeds and elevating ideas. 



USES OF ED UCA TION FOR B US I NESS 1 63 



Uses of Education for Business. 

Charles William Eliot, LL.D. 
President of Harvard University. 
BEFORE we can talk together to advantage 
about the value of education in business, we 
ought to come to a common understanding about 
the sort of education we mean and the sort of 
business. Nobody doubts that primary and 
grammar school training are useful to everybody ; 
or that high school training is advantageous for 
a clerk, salesman, commercial traveler, or skilled 
workman ; or that technical or scientific school 
training is useful to an engineer, chemist, elec- 
trician, mechanician, or miner. Our question is, 
of what use is the education called " liberal " to 
a man of business? The education called liberal 
has undergone a great expansion during our 
generation, and is now, in the best institutions, 
thoroughly conformed to modern uses. All 
universities worthy of the name — even the oldest 
and most conservative — now supply a broad and 
free range of studies, which includes the ancient 
subjects, but establishes on a perfect equality — 
with them the new and vaster subjects of modern 
languages and literature, history, political science, 
and natural science. We must not think of the 
liberal education of to-day as dealing with a dead 
past — with dead languages, buried peoples, and 



164 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

exploded philosophies ; on the contrary, every- 
thing which universities now teach is quick with 
life and capable of application to modern uses. 
They teach indeed the languages and literature 
of Judea, Greece, and Rome; but it is because 
those literatures are instinct with eternal life. 
They teach mathematics, but it is the mathema- 
tics mostly created within the lifetime of the 
older men of this generation. In teaching Eng- 
lish, French, and German, they are teaching the 
modern vehicles of all learning — just what Latin 
was in mediaeval times. As to history, political 
science, and natural science, the subjects them- 
selves, and all the methods by which they are 
taught, may properly be said to be new within a 
century. Liberal education is not to be justly 
regarded as something dry, withered, and effete ; 
it is as full of sap as the cedars of Lebanon. 

And what sort of business do we mean ? 
Surely the larger sorts of legitimate and hon- 
orable business ; that business which is of advan- 
tage to both buyer and seller, and to producer, 
distributor and consumer alike, whether individ- 
uals or nations, which makes common some use- 
ful thing which has been rare, or makes accessible 
to the masses good things which have been kept 
within reach only of the few. That great art of 
production and exchange which through the 
centuries has increased human comfort, cherished 
peace, fostered the fine arts, developed the preg- 



USES OF ED UCA TION FOR B US I NESS. 1 6 5 

nant principle of associated action, and promoted 
both public security and public property. 

With this understanding of what we mean by 
education on the one hand and business on the 
other, let us see if there can be any doubt as to 
the nature of the relations between them. The 
business man in large affairs, needs keen observa- 
tion, a quick mental grasp of new subjects, and a 
wide range of knowledge. Whence come these 
powers and attainments — either to the educated 
or to the uneducated — save through practice and 
study ? But education is only early systematic 
practice and study under guidance. The object 
of all good education is to develop just these 
powers — accuracy in observation, quickness and 
certainty in seizing upon the main points of a 
new subject, and discrimination in separating the 
trivial from the important in great masses of facts. 
This is what liberal education does for the physi- 
cian, the lawyer, the minister, and the scientist. 
This is what it can do for the man of business ; 
to give a mental power is one of the main ends 
of the higher education. Is not active business 
a field in which mental power finds full play ? 
Again education imparts knowledge, and who 
has greater need to know economics, history, and 
natural science than the man of large business? 
Further, liberal education develops a sense of 
right, duty, and honor; and more and more, in 
the modern world, large business rests on recti- 



1 66 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA K 

tude and honor, as well as on good judgment. 
Education does this through the contemplation 
and study of the moral ideals of our race ; not 
in drowsiness or dreaminess or in mere vague 
enjoyment of poetic and religious abstractions, 
but in the resolute purpose to apply spiritual 
ideals to actual life. 

When the universities hold up before their 
youth the great Semitic ideals which were em- 
bodied in the Decalogue, they mean that those 
ideals should be applied in politics. When they 
teach their young men that Asiatic ideal of un- 
known antiquity, the Golden Rule, they mean 
that their deciples, shall apply it to business ; 
when they inculcate that comprehensive maxim 
of Christian ethics, " Ye are all members of one 
another," they mean that this moral principle is 
applicable to all human relations, whether be- 
tween individuals, families, states, or nations. 

Again, higher education has always made great 
account of the power of expression in speech and 
writing, whence has arisen an opinion that liberal 
education must be less useful to the man of busi- 
ness than to the lawyer, or minister, because the 
business man has less need than they of this 
power. Have we not all seen, in recent years, that 
leading men of business, particularly those who 
act for corporations, have great need of a high- 
ly trained mind of clear and convincing expres- 
sion ? Business men need in speech and writing, 



USES OF EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS. 1 67 

all the Roman terseness and French clearness ; 
the graces and elegancies of literary style they 
may indeed dispense with, but not with the 
greater qualities of compactness, accuracy, and 
vigor. It is a liberal education indeed which 
teaches a youth of fair parts and reasonable in- 
dustry to speak and write his native language 
strongly, accurately, and persuasively. That one 
attainment is sufficient reward for the whole long 
course of twelve years spent in liberal study. 
But you say : This is all theory ; what are the 
facts with regard to the connection between 
higher education and successful business life ? 
Among the young men who have graduated from 
Harvard University within forty years there have 
been many cases of rapid advancement from the 
bottom to the top of the business corporations in 
great variety. A young man leaves college at 
twenty-three and goes into a cotton mill at the 
bottom ; and in four years he is superintendent. 
Another lands in a Western city, three days after 
his graduation, without a dollar, and without a 
friend in the city, and ten years afterward he is 
the owner of the best establishment for printing 
books in that city. A young man six years out 
of college is superintendent of one of the largest 
woolen mills in the United States. Another a 
little older is the manager of one of the most im- 
portant steel works in the country. These are 
but striking examples of a large class of facts. 



1 68 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DA Y 

Successful business men themselves give no 
doubtful answer to the questions we are consid- 
ering. Successful business men with the rarest 
exceptions, wish their sons to be educated to the 
highest point the sons can reach. No matter 
whether the father be himself an educated man 
or not, when his success in business has given 
him the means of educating his children he is 
sure to desire that they receive a liberal educa- 
tion whether they are going into business or not. 

Finally, liberal education is an end in itself 
apart from all its utilities and applications. 
When we teach a child to read, our primary aim 
is not to enable it to decipher a way-bill or a re- 
ceipt, but to kindle its imagination, enlarge its 
vision, and open for it the avenues of knowledge. 
The same is true of a liberal education in its 
utmost reach. Its chief objects for the individ- 
ual are development, inspiration, and exaltation ; 
the practical advantages which flow from it are 
incidental, not paramount. 

For the community the institutions of higher 
education do a like service. They bring each 
successive generation of youth up to levels of 
knowledge and righteousness which the preced- 
ing generation reached in their maturity. Public 
comfort, ease and wealth are doubtless promoted 
by them ; but their true and sufficient ends are 
knowledge and righteousness. 



PEACEMAKERS OF BLESSED MEMORY. 1 69 

Peacemakers of Blessed Memory. 

Adapted. 
Gen. Lew Wallace. 

THERE is such a thing as an honest mistake. 
If the Confederate soldier was in the wrong, it 
was where one does a wrong believing it right ; 
and as a rule the distinguishing mark of such 
mistakes is that their evil consequences strike 
hardest at home. But in this case, saying that 
the unfortunates were wrong in believing they 
had a cause worthy the smile of heaven, one 
thing at least is never to be overlooked — they 
died for it. Can a man furnish better proof of 
his honesty ? Ah, no ! And instead of spitting 
on his grave, I would libate it with a cup mixed 
in equal parts of sorrow and admiration. " There's 
rosemary, that's for remembrance." Remem- 
brance ! Of what ? Not the cause, but the hero- 
ism it invoked. 

I like that idea of introspection. It is worth 
converting into a habit. Our souls, if we may 
trust the preachers, can become unclean. Not 
that they contaminate themselves. How con- 
venient, could we now and then take them out 
and give them a cleansing ! But as this is beyond 
us, the next best thing, I suggest, is to turn a 
bright light in upon them — much as the doctors 
do when they would see down our throats. If in 



I 7° BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

a trial of the suggestion — as well here and now 
— you should discover the ethereal part of you 
spotted with hate, not of the dead, but of living 
Confederates — the distinction, as I conceive it, 
is so easy as to be more than possible — make 
haste and get rid of it. 

There lived a man who left behind him a life 
which will serve to the last clock stroke of time 
as an all-round examplar of the better qualities 
of our nature. In the heat of trials which would 
have burned love of his fellows out of other men, 
he practiced a patience never before exemplified 
but in one instance, and dealt his enemies such 
exceeding charity that they were none the less 
his friends. Out of obscurity he arose as the sun 
rises, and presently his light was the property of 
the whole world ; insomuch that there are yet 
millions of men, the same whom he brought up 
with him, only out of a deeper darkness, and 
their children, who think it no harm to worship 
him. He proved the feasibility of self-education, 
and that, once attained, it is of peculiar excel- 
lence in that it leaves the genius of the individual 
unshorn of its originality, and free to destroy or 
conserve according to its inspirations. He was a 
burthen bearer from his birth, and the burthens 
were girt upon his spirit even more than his 
body ; yet while they crooked the body, and bent 
it earthward, and left it gnarled and knotted and 
ugly, the spirit grew in strength and beauty, and 



PEA CEMA KERS OF BLESSED MEMOR Y. 1 7 1 

was at no time so strong and beautiful as in the 
hour an assassin blew it out. And great was the 
need of strength, for the burthens were many, 
the very heaviest of them being the Confederacy 
of which I am talking. How that war wrung 
his heart ! What sorrow, at times, what agony, 
it gave him ! Think of the refrain ringing through 
his windows for four long years, " We are com- 
ing, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand 
more." And where were the singers going? 
And to what ? Spare me answering. He knew. 
Yet in all that time there was not an hour in 
which he did not recognize the Confederates, 
even those in arms, as his countrymen. 

Do you ask the proof. Here it is. In the 
archives of the Government there are many judg- 
ments of death, but not one warrant bearing his 
signature. Tell me now, you whom I may 
induce to study and weigh the reasons for your 
unwillingness to reconcile with your old antagon- 
ists in gray, what were the provocations they 
gave you compared with those they gave him ? 
Aye, wherein are you so loftily perched above 
forgiveness, and so contemptuous of its divin- 
ity, better, nobler, more godly than Abraham 
Lincoln? 

I knew another man whose dealings with Con- 
federates after surrender make him worthy a 
place in the golden gallery of American exem- 
plars. Thirteen thousand of them yielded them- 



172 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

selves to him at Donelson ; 37,000 at Vicksburg ; 
and at Appomattox all that remained of the 
Confederacy, army, navy, citizens, government, 
asked terms of him. Practically they were at his 
mercy. If thirsty for blood, he could have 
gorged himself. Never had any man, at least 
on this continent, so many vials full of punish- 
ment for pouring out on the heads of enemies as 
Ulysses S. Grant. You know the story. Liter- 
ally he fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and 
set the revolted States on their feet by return- 
ing their people to them. 

Such are the records of the two men, one a 
civilian, the other a soldier, both evolutions of 
the great war, both foremost among the foremost 
of the world. 



The Keys to Success. 

Edward William Bok. 
Used by permission. Abridged. 

The successful life calls for certain sacrifices, 
and this especially applies to a young man's social 
life. Now some young men have a dangerous 
belief that employers have no jurisdiction over 
their evening hours. But the fact is that an 
employer has some rights in this respect. He 
has a perfect right to expect that his employee 
shall not only carry himself respectably in his 



THE KEYS TO SUCCESS. 1 73 

social life, but that he shall temper his social 
habits to business demands. 

The average young man is very apt to go to 
extremes in social life. On the one hand there 
are those who so immerse themselves in business 
that they shut out every social pleasure. They 
get so weighted down with the serious problems 
of life that they become impatient with the 
lighter side of living as being frothy and silly, 
and the man who allows himself to get so thor- 
oughly wedded to business that he can see no 
good in the social life is his own worst enemy. 
He becomes unprofitable to himself, and uninter- 
esting to other people. He stagnates. Nothing 
in the world can make a man more thoroughly 
selfish and so forgetful of the rights and com- 
forts of those in his home as too close an appli- 
cation to business. 

Every young man must have a certain amount 
of social life. It is good for him. His nature 
demands it. We must play in order to work 
better. The mind needs a change of thought 
just as the body needs a change of raiment. A 
wholesome social life broadens a young man ; it 
rounds him out. But, on the other hand, there 
are young men who go to excess in their social 
life, and this is just as deadly as the other is 
stagnating. Social pleasures are like everything 
else in this world ; their dangers lie not in their 
use but in their abuse. 



1 74 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

No mind can be fresh in the morning that has 
been kept at a tension the night before by late 
hours. A young man at twenty-five needs more 
sleep than does a man at fifty. It is his building 
time. Any young man, who, except on rare 
occasions, grants himself less than eight hours 
sleep robs himself of just so much vitality. Asleep 
by eleven and up by seven is a course which 
hundreds of successful men have laid out for 
themselves. A man to be a factor in the busi- 
ness world must have a fresh mind and a clear 
brain, and that is only possible when he gives 
them proper rest. 

Taking a young man to task for questionable 
pleasures always brings up the story of the 
young English curate who was censured by his 
bishop for going fox-hunting. It seemed to the 
bishop to be too worldly. The young minister 
replied that his fox-hunting did not seem to him 
any more worldly than did the fact of the bishop's 
presence at a large masquerade ball a few even- 
ings before. The bishop explained that while 
it was true he had been visiting at the house 
where the ball had been taking place, he had not 
been within three rooms of the dancing any time 
during the evening. " Oh, well, if it comes to 
that," said the young minister, " I never get 
within three fields of the hounds." 

There is no sense in saying to an active, 
healthy young fellow that he must sit at home five 



THE KEYS TO SUCCESS. 175 

nights of the week and read a book, and the 
other secular night go out and take a nice little 
walk. He won't do it. It's unnatural. 

Now young men often ask what are the social 
pleasures and indulgences which seriously affect 
a young man's success ? A specific answer can 
not be given. No one set of rules can be applied 
to all. An exhilarating pleasure to one is often 
a positive injury to another. The only rule by 
which a young man can live in his social life is 
this : Any social pleasure which affects a young 
man's health, which clouds his mind, from which 
he rises the next morning tired rather than 
refreshed, is bad for him and affects his success. 
Good health is the foundation of all possible 
success in life ; affect the one and you affect the 
other. If a pleasure refreshes and elevates your 
mind and body and you feel better for it the 
next morning, that is a pleasure good for you. 
Only one point of self-indulgence do I wish this 
evening to dwell upon in a specific manner, and 
that is indulgence in alcoholic liquors. When I 
speak of this question I take it entirely away from 
any religious or moral standpoint. To me it is 
not a question of whether it is right or wrong for a 
young man to indulge in spirituous liquors. It 
is rather can he do it than should he do it. Is it 
wise, rather than is it wrong. And I say to him 
plainly and directly that he cannot do it. Sim- 
ply take the hard, common sense view of it. The 



1 76 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OE TO-DA V. 

temporary exhilaration which is supposed to 
come from alcohol is unnecessary to a young 
man in good health. Therefore it can do him 
absolutely no good. But it may do him harm. 
The chances are that it will. Arid no- young man 
can afford to take a single risk or chance in the 
morning of a business career. He needs the 
unhampered use of all his powers, of all his 
health, of all his intellect, and all his manners. 

Prudence is teaching men that they cannot 
afford to have habits which put their health and 
self-control in peril. One sees this moderation 
in all things. See how swearing is going out of 
vogue. The man whose speech is punctuated 
with the oaths which characterized the conversa- 
tion of a gentleman in former days is to-day 
stamped as vulgar, as coarse. 

The drunkard to-day is declared a nuisance in 
the same society which only a few years back 
shielded his weakness. Coarse indulgences of all 
kinds have fallen under reproach. They are 
offensive to good taste. 

So to say to a young man to study self-control, 
self-poise, temperance, moderation, is not alone 
to tell him what is best for him, but it is to place 
him exactly in line with the tendencies of other 
men. 



EQUIPMEN T FOR SER VICE. 1 77 

Equipment for Service. 

Woodrow Wilson, LL.D. 
President of Princeton University. 

There are other things besides material suc- 
cess with which we must supply our generation. 
It must be supplied with men who care more for 
principles than for money, for the right adjust- 
ments of life than for the gross accumulations of 
profit. The problems that call for sober thought- 
fulness and mere devotion are as pressing as those 
which call for practical efficiency. We are here not 
merely to release the faculties of men for their 
own use, but also to quicken their social under- 
standing, instruct their consciences, and give them 
the catholic vision of those who know their just 
relations to their fellow men. Here in America, 
for every man touched with nobility, for every 
man touched with the spirit of our institutions, 
social service is the high law of duty, and every 
American university must square its standards 
by that law or lack its national title. It is serv- 
ing the nation to give men the enlightments of 
a general training ; it is serving the nation to 
equip fit men for thorough scientific investiga- 
tion and for the tasks of exact scholarship, for 
science and scholarship carry the truth forward 
from generation to generation and give the cer- 
tain touch of knowledge to the processes of life. 



1^8 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

But the whole service demanded is not rendered 
until something is added to the mere training of 
the undergraduate and the mere equipment of 
the investigator, something ideal and of the very 
spirit of all action. The final synthesis of learn- 
ing is in philosophy. You shall most clearly 
judge the spirit of a university if you judge it by 
the philosophy it teaches ; and the philosophy of 
conduct is what every wise man should wish to 
derive from his knowledge of the thoughts and 
the affairs of the generations that have gone 
before him. We are not put into this world to 
sit still and know ; we are put into it to act. 

It is true that in order to learn, men must for 
a little while withdraw from action, must seek 
some quiet place remote from the bustle of 
affairs, where their thoughts may run clear and 
tranquil, and the heats of business be for the 
time put off ; but that cloistered refuge is no 
place to dream in. It is a place for the first con- 
spectus of the mind, for a thoughtful poring upon 
the map of life ; and the boundaries which should 
emerge to the mind's eye are not more the intel- 
lectual than the moral boundaries of thought 
and action. The argument for efficiency in edu- 
cation can have no permanent validity if the 
efficiency sought be not moral as well as intellect- 
ual. The ages of strong and definite moral 
impulse have been the ages of achievement ; and 
the moral impulses which have lifted highest 



THE WORLD A WHISPERING GALLERY. 1 79 

have come from Christian peoples, — the moving 
history of our own nation were proof enough of 
that. Moral efficiency is, in the last analysis, 
the fundamental argument for liberal culture. 
A merely literary education, got out of books 
and old literatures is a poor thing enough if the 
teacher stick at grammatical and syntactical drill ; 
but if it be indeed an introduction into the 
thoughtful labors of men of all generations it may 
be made the prologue to the mind's emancipa- 
tion : its emancipation from narrowness, — from 
narrowness of sympathy, of perception, of motive, 
of purpose, and of hope. And the deep fountains 
of Christian teaching are its most refreshing 
springs. 



The World a Whispering Gallery. 

Newell Dwight Hillis, D.D. 

From "Right Living as a Fine Art." Copyright, 1898, 
1899, by Fleming H. Revell Company. Used by permission. 

When the sage counsels us " to listen to stars 
and birds, to babes and sages," he opens to us 
the secrets of the soul's increase in wisdom and 
happiness. All culture begins with listening. 
Growth is not through shrewd thinking or elo- 
quent speaking, but through accurate seeing and 
hearing. Our world is one vast whispering gal- 
lery, yet only those who listen hear " the still, 



l8o BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

small voice " of truth. Putting his ear down to 
the rocks, the listening geologist hears the story 
of the rocks. Standing under the stars, the lis- 
tening astronomer hears the music of the spheres. 
Leaving behind the din and dirt of the city, 
Agassiz plunged into the forests of the Amazon, 
and listening to boughs and buds and birds he 
found out all their secrets. 

One of our wisest teachers has said, " The 
greatest thing a human soul ever does in this 
world, is to see something, and to tell'what it saw 
in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk, 
for one who can think. But thousands can think 
for one who can see ; to see clearly is poetry, 
prophecy and religion all in one. Therefore 
rinding the world of literature more or less 
divided into thinkers and seers, I believe we 
shall find also, that the seers are wholly the 
greater race of the two." For greatness is 
vision. 

Opening his ears, Watt hears the movement of 
steam and finds his fortune. Millet explained 
his fame by saying he copied the colors of the 
sunset at the moment when reapers bow the 
head in silent prayer. * The great bard, too, tells 
us he went apart and listened to " find sermons in 
stones, and books in the running brooks." 

It is a proverb that pilgrims to foreign lands 
find only what they take with them. Riding 
over the New England hills near Boston, Lowell 



THE WORLD A WHISPERING GALLERY. l8l 

spake not to his companion, for now he was 
looking out upon the pageantry of a glorious 
October day, and now he remembered that this 
was the road forever associated with Paul Re- 
vere's ride. Reaching the outskirts of Cambridge, 
he roused from his reverie to discover that his 
silent companion had been brooding over bales 
and barrels, not knowing that this had been one 
of those rare days when October holds an art 
exhibit, and also oblivious to the fact that he 
had been passing through scenes historic through 
the valor of a brave man. 

Of the four artists copying the same landscape 
near Chamouni, all saw a different scene. To an 
idler a river means a fish pole, to a heated school 
boy a bath ; to the man of affairs the stream sug- 
gests a turbine wheel ; while the same stream 
leads the philosopher to reflect upon the influence 
of great rivers upon cities and civilizations. 
Coleridge thought the bank of his favorite stream 
was made to lie down upon, but Bunyan, behold- 
ing the stream through the iron bars of a prison 
cell, felt the breezes of the " Delectable Moun- 
tains " cool his fevered cheek, and stooping down 
he wet his parched lips with the river of the 
waters of life. Nature has no message for heed- 
less, inattentive hearers. It is possible for a 
youth to go through life deaf to the sweetest 
sounds that ever fell over Heaven's battlements, 
and blind to the beauty of landscape and moun- 



1 82 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

tain and sea and sky. There is no music in the 
autumn wind until the listener comes. There is 
no order and beauty in the rolling spheres until 
some Herschel stands beneath the stars. There 
is no fragrance in the violet until the lover of 
flowers bends down above the blossoms. 

Listening to stars, Laplace heard the story how 
fire mists are changed to habitable earths, and so 
became wise toward iron and wood, steel and 
stone. Listening to birds, Cuvier heard the 
song within the shell and found out the life his- 
tory of all things that creep or swim or fly. 
Listening to babes that have, as Froebel thought, 
been so recently playmates with angels, the phil- 
osopher discovered the teachableness, trust and 
purity of childhood, the secret of individual 
happiness and progress. Listening to sages, the 
youth of to-day garners into the storehouse of 
his mind all the intellectual treasures of the good 
and great of past ages. That youth may have 
culture without college who gives heed to 
Channing's injunction "to listen to stars and 
birds, to babes and sages." 



Growth : An Evidence of Education. 

Nicholas Murray Butler, LL.D. 
President of Columbia University. 

THERE is a type of mind which, when trained 
to a certain point, crystallizes, as it were, and 



GRO WTH : AN E VIDENCE OF EDUCA TION. 1 83 

refuses to move forward thereafter. This type 
of mind fails to give one of the essential evi- 
dences of an education. It has perhaps acquired 
much and promised much ; but somehow or 
other the promise is not fulfilled. It is not dead, 
but in a trance. Only such functions are per- 
formed as serve to keep it where it is ; there is 
no movement, no development, no new power or 
accomplishment. The impulse to continuous 
study, and to that self-education which are the 
conditions of permanent intellectual growth, is 
wanting. Education has so far failed of one of 
its chief purposes. 

A human mind continuing to grow and to 
develop throughout a long life is a splendid and 
impressive sight. It was that characteristic in 
Mr. Gladstone which made his personality so 
attractive to young and ambitious men. They 
were fired by his zeal and inspired by his limit- 
less intellectual energy. To have passed from 
being " the rising hope of the stern and unbend- 
ing Tories " in 1838 to the unchallenged leader- 
ship of the anti-Tory party in Great Britain a 
generation later, and to have continued to grow 
throughout an exceptionally long life, is no mean 
distinction ; and it is an example of what, in less 
conspicuous ways, is the lot of every mind whose 
training is effective. Broadened views, widened 
sympathies, deepened insights, are the accompani- 
ments of growth. 



1 84 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO- DA Y. 

For this growth a many-sided interest is nec- 
essary, and this is why growth and intellectual 
and moral narrowness are eternally at war. 
There is much in our modern education which is 
uneducational because it makes growth difficult, 
if not impossible. Early specialization, with its 
attendant limited range both of information and 
of interest, is an enemy of growth. Turning 
from the distasteful before it is understood is an 
enemy of growth. Failure to see the relation of 
the subject of one's special interest to other sub- 
jects is an enemy of growth. The pretense of 
investigation and discovery before mastering 
existent knowledge is an enemy of growth. The 
habit of cynical indifference toward men and 
things and of aloofness from them, sometimes 
supposed to be peculiarly academic, is an enemy 
of growth. These, then, are all to be shunned 
while formal education is going on, if it is to 
carry with it the priceless gift of an impulse to 
continuous growth. " Life," says Bishop Spald- 
ing in an eloquent passage, " is the unfolding of 
a mysterious power, which in man rises to self- 
consciousness, and through self-consciousness to 
the knowledge of a world of truth and order and 
love, where action may no longer be left wholly 
to the sway of matter or to the impulse of 
instinct, but may and should be controlled by 
reason and conscience. To further this process 
by deliberate and intelligent effort is to educate " 



PA TRIO TISM. 185 

— and to educate so as to sow the seed of con- 
tinuous growth, intellectual and moral. 



Patriotism. 

Hon. Charles Emory Smith. 
Contributed by the author. 

The sentiment of patriotism naturally enshrines 
itself in the supreme crisis of its trial and triumph, 
and in its supreme personal types. With Ameri- 
cans it turns instinctively to the two master 
epochs and the two master heroes of our history. 
Each epoch developed illustrious leaders. The 
period of the Civil War and its preparatory strug- 
gle was resplendent with its matchless group of 
marvelous men who have commanded the admir- 
ation of the world. There was Seward, with his 
long leadership, his acute vision and his brilliant 
statecraft ; there was Douglas, who was the Rup- 
ert of debate and the stormy petrel of our most 
turbulent politics ; there was Grant, with his con- 
quering sword in the field, and Stevens, with his 
naming fire in the forum. But out of Illinois, 
untrained, untutored, except in the self-commun- 
ion of his own great soul, came the God-given 
Chieftain to whom the acknowledged princes of 
statesmanship and oratory were fain to yield the 
sceptre of supremacy, and whose serene faith and 
sublime inspiration and almost divine prescience 
have not been surpassed in all the long and glow- 



1 86 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

ing story of liberty's march and humanity's prog- 
ress. And thus in the incarnation of patriotism 
we offer our never-ending homage at the shrine 
of Lincoln, the saviour of the Union. 

The love of country is a flame that burns in 
every true heart. But country is not simply 
rock and dell, or blooming field or stately struc- 
ture ; it is not alone material or geographical. It 
was not the glory of the Parthenon that kindled 
the passion of the Athenian. It was not the 
grandeur of the towering Alps that moved Win- 
kelried to gather in his breast the sheaf of 
Austrian spears, and through his own sacrifice 
make a triumphal pathway for his struggling 
compatriots. It was not the gleaming heather, or 
the bonnie blue lakes of the highlands, loved as 
they were, which fired " the Scots who ha' with 
Wallace bled." The inspiration of these glorious 
deeds was the love of liberty and the pride of 
principle which found their home in the mountain 
fastness and in the classic grove. The Greece 
and Switzerland and Scotland which held the de- 
votion of their sons were not the outward symbol 
but the inward life and the historic character 
which stamped their attributes and their aspira- 
tions. 

And so our country, in its true significance, 
means its essence and not simply its substance. 
The American Republic is not domain ; it is not 
power ; it is not wealth ; it is embodied liberty 



THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. 1 87 

regulated by law ; it is liberty resting upon organ- 
ized institutions, through which society and civi- 
lization may blossom into their fullest and fair- 
est flower. 



The Pursuit of Happiness. 

Charles Dudley Warner. 

PERHAPS the most curious and interesting phrase 
ever put into a public document is " the pursuit 
of happiness." It is declared to be an inalienable 
right. It cannot be sold. It cannot be given 
away. It is doubtful if it can be left by will. 
The right of every man to be six feet high and of 
every woman to be five feet four was regarded 
as self-evident, until women asserted their un- 
doubted right to be six feet high also, when some 
confusion was introduced into the interpretation 
of this rhetorical fragment of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. 

The pursuit of happiness ! It is not strange 
that men call it an illusion. But I am satisfied 
that it is not the thing itself, but the pursuit, 
that is an illusion. Instead of thinking of the 
pursuit, why not fix our thoughts upon the mo- 
ments, the hours, perhaps the days, of this divine 
peace, this merriment of body and mind, that 
can be repeated, and perhaps indefinitely ex- 
tended by the simplest of all means, namely, the 



1 88 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

disposition to make the best of whatever comes 
to us ? Perhaps the Latin poet was right in say- 
ing that no man can count himself happy while in 
this life, that is, in a continuous state of happi- 
ness ; but as there is for the soul no time save the 
conscious moment called " now," it is quite possi- 
ble to make that " now " a happy state of exis- 
tence. The point I make is that we should not 
habitually postpone that season of happiness to 
the future. 

Sometimes wandering in a primeval forest, in 
all the witchery of the woods, besought by the 
kindliest solicitations of nature, wild flowers in 
the trail, the call of the squirrel, the flutter of the 
bird, the great world-music of the wind in the 
pine-tops, the flecks of sunlight on the brown car- 
pet and on the rough bark of the immemorial trees, 
I find myself unconsciously postponing my enjoy- 
ment until I shall reach a hoped-for open place of 
full sun and boundless prospect. 

The analogy cannot be pushed, for it is the 
common experience that these open spots in life, 
where leisure and space and contentment await us, 
are usually grown up with thickets, fuller of ob- 
stacles, to say nothing of the labors and duties 
and difficulties, than any part of the weary path 
we have trod. 

The pitiful part of this inalienable right to the 
pursuit of happiness is, however, that most men in- 
terpret it to mean the pursuit of wealth, and strive 



CAPITAL AND CONSOLIDATION' OF LABOR. 1 89 



i 



for that always, postponing being happy until 
they get a fortune, and if they are lucky in that, 
find in the end that the happiness has somehow 
eluded them, that, in short, they have not cultivat- 
ed that in themselves which alone can bring hap- 
piness. More than that, they have lost the power 
of the enjoyment of the essential pleasures of life. 
I think that the woman in the Scriptures who out 
of her poverty put her mite into the contribution- 
box got more happiness out of that driblet of 
generosity and self-sacrifice than some men in our 
day have experienced in founding a university. 



Combination of Capital and Consolidation 

of Labor. 

Justice David J. Brewer. 

The most noticeable social fact of to-day is that 
of the combination of capital and the organiza- 
tion of labor. Whatever may be the causes, and 
whatever may be the results, good or bad, the 
fact is beyond dispute that the trend of the two 
great industrial forces of capital and labor is 
along the line of consolidation and co-operation. 
I am not here to decry this tendency. I realize 
full well that only through this movement are 
the great material achievements of the day pos- 
sible ; but one thing is clear, and that is that the 
penalty which the nation pays for all its benefits 



190 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

is the growing disposition to sacrifice the individ- 
ual to the mass, to make the liberty of the one 
something which may be ruthlessly trampled into 
the dust, because of some supposed benefit to 
the many. 

A capital combine may, as it is claimed, produce 
better, cheaper and more satisfactory results in 
manufacture, transportation, and general busi- 
ness ; but too often the combine is not content 
with the voluntary co-operation of such as choose 
to join. It grasps at monopoly, and seeks to 
crush out all competition. If any individual pre- 
fers his independent business, however small, 
and refuses to join the combine, it proceeds to 
assail that business. With its accumulation of 
wealth it can afford for a while to so largely 
undersell as to speedily destroy it. It thus 
crushes or swallows the individual, and he is 
assaulted as though he were an outlaw. 

So it is with the organizations of labor; the 
leaders order a strike ; the organization throws 
down its tools and ceases to work. No individ- 
ual member dare say : " I have a family to sup- 
port, I prefer to work," but is forced to go with 
the general body. Not content with this, the 
organization too often attempts by force to keep 
away other laborers. It stands with its accumu- 
lated power of numbers, not merely to coerce its 
individual members, but also to threaten any 
outsiders who seek to take their places. Where 



The flag. 19 i 

is the individual laborer who dares assert his 
liberty and act as he pleases in the matter of 
work ; where is the individual contractor or 
employer who can carry on his business as he 
thinks best ? 

The business men are becoming slaves of the 
combine ; the laborers of the trades' union. 
Through the land the idea is growing that the 
individual is nothing and that the organization is 
everything ; and we have the fancy sketch of the 
dreamer of a supposed ideal state, in which the 
individual has no choice of lot or toil, but is 
moved about according to the supposed superior 
wisdom of the organized mass ; and this, we are 
told, is the liberty for which the ages have toiled, 
and for which human blood has crimsoned the 
earth. 



The Flag. 

Wallace Bruce. 
Contributed to this collection by Mr. Bruce. 

The only factor in the integral of God's sov- 
ereignty is the individual ; the only factor in the 
multiple of this great nation is the unit. There 
were nineteen families in the Mayflower — an indi- 
visible number. There were thirteen stripes and 
thirteen stars in the old flag, indivisible from its 



I92 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

birth. If any man individually wishes to secede, 
he can come and go at his pleasure. Blackstone 
defines liberty as the right of locomotion ; but 
no man or body of men can walk off with twenty 
square feet of the sacred soil of old Virginia or 
a quarter of a school district in Massachusetts. 
That question has been decided once and for- 
ever. 

The serpent of State sovereignty that found its 
way into the Paradise of our new Republic, and 
coiled itself Laocoonlike around the limbs of the 
young nation, has been consigned to a deeper 
Pandemonium than dreamed of by Dante or Mil- 
ton. 

The power and supremacy of the flag have 
been established — the enduring symbol of the 
nation's authority ; and I have great respect for 
the home-rearing of that little boy who when asked 
in Sunday-School, which was the best verse in the 
Bible, replied, " If any man attempts to haul 
down the American flag shoot him on the spot." 
His home-training for American citizenship had 
not been neglected, and his Apocryphal verse, 
printed in bold type, would not injure a leaf of 
any volume of Holy Writ. 

You remember how General Dix, who had 
been Secretary of War only eleven days, sent 
out that glorious message, the first to thrill the 
Northern heart. In that sentence, the flag 
became America ! Ten thousand men might 



THE FLAG. 1 93 

have been shot down in the streets of cities in 
revolt, and some excuse been devised to cover 
the crime ; but when the Flag was assailed, the 
people of the North came like a great avalanche, 
increasing as it swept, until two million brave 
men went to the front in the cause of Liberty. 

We are here to-day, children of a great Repub- 
lic, crowned with the greatest freedom. Do we 
know how to appreciate its value ? Some of 
you here gathered know what it cost. Count 
it not in the cold figures of arithmetic or in the 
value of the individual man in the world's com- 
merce. 

By the vacant chairs at so many firesides, by 
the privations, by the heart agony, by the sleep- 
less nights and long vigils, by the deeds and 
sufferings of heroic women, by the tears of 
mother, wife and sister, by the bowed head of 
the gray-haired man from whom went forth the 
joy and support of his declining years, by the 
great army of martyrs, by the brave women who 
laid down their lives in fever hospitals, and in 
the presence of that God who listens to the cry 
of the raven, ay, " caters, providentially for the 
sparrow," tell me, if you can, the price of yonder 
symbol? 

The offerings that we bring fade away and 
perish, but the glory you won is immortal. No 
wonder in the midst of these Providences that the 
whole land, from the pines of Maine to the 



194 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

forests of the Sierras, on days like these, wakes 
to the reveille of the morning stars, and brings 
its offerings to the dead soldiers until night 
stations her starry pickets above their graves. 

Brave boys are they ! gone at their country's 
call ! How the old songs come back, and eyes 
grow dim. Their hands are waiting to clasp 
yours as of old, and their lips to ask what of the 
Great Republic for which they died. As one by 
one you go to join the heroic throng, gathering 
for the last great muster, take this message, " We 
have one country, one people, free and united, 
from gulf to lake, from sea to sea." 



Modern Fiction. 

Opie P. Read. 

The drift of latter-day fiction is largely shown 
by the department store. The selling of books 
by the ton proves a return to the extremes of 
romanticism. People do not jostle one another 
in their eagerness to secure even a semblance of 
the truth. The taste of to-day is a strong appe- 
tite for fadism ; and a novel to be successful 
must bear the stamp of society rather than the 
approval of the critic. The reader has gone 
slumming, and must be shocked in order to be 
amused. Reviewers tell us of a revolt against 
realism, that we no longer fawn upon a dull 



MODERN FICTION. 1 95 

truth, that we crave gauze rather than substance. 
In fact, realism was never a fad. Truth has 
never been fashionable; no society takes up 
philosophy as an amusement. 

But after all, popular taste does not make a 
literature. Strength does not meet with immedi- 
ate recognition ; originality is more often con- 
demned than praised. The intense book often 
dies with one reading, its story is a wild pigeon 
of the mind, and sails away to be soon forgotten ; 
but the novel in which there is even one real 
character, one man of the soil, remains with us 
as a friend. In the minds of thinking people, 
realism cannot be supplanted. But by realism, 
I do not mean the commonplace details of any 
interesting household, nor the hired man with 
mud on his cowhide boots, nor the whining 
farmer who sits with his feet on the kitchen-stove, 
but the glory that we find in nature and the 
grandeur that we find in man, his bravery, honor, 
his self-sacrifice, his virtue. Realism does not 
mean the unattractive. A rose is as real as a 
toad. And a realistic novel of the days of Caesar 
would be worth more than Plutarch's Lives. 

Every age sees a literary revolution, but out of 
that revolution there may come no great work of 
art. The best fiction is the unconscious grace 
of a cultivated mind, a catching of the quaint 
humor of men, a soft look of mercy, and a sym- 
pathetic tear. And this sort of a book may be 



I96 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

neglected for years, no busy critic may speak a 
word in its behalf, but there comes a time when 
by the merest accident a great mind finds it and 
flashes its genius back upon the cloud that has 
hidden it. 

Yes, there is a return to romanticism, if indeed 
there was ever a turn from it. The well-told 
story has ever found admirers. To the world all 
the stories have not been told. The stars show 
no age, and the sun was as bright yesterday as it 
was the morning after creation. But a simple 
story without character is not the highest form 
of fiction. It is a story that may become a fad, 
if it be shocking enough, if it has in it the thrill 
of delicious wickedness, but it cannot live. The 
literary lion of to-day may be the literary ass of 
to-morrow, but the ass has his bin full of oats 
and cannot complain. 

The novel, whether it be of classic form or of 
faddish type, makes a mark upon the mind of the 
public. Fiction is a necessary element of modern 
education. A man may be a successful physician 
or a noted lawyer without having read a novel ; 
but he could not be regarded as a man of refined 
culture. A novel is an intellectual luxury, and 
in the luxuries of a country we find the refine- 
ments of a nation. It was not invention but 
fancy that made Greece great. A novel-reading 
nation is a progressive nation. At one time the 
most successful publication in this country was a 



RECOGNIZE THE UNIONS. 1 97 

weekly paper rilled with graceless sensationalism, 
and it was not the pulpit nor the lecture-platform 
that took hold of the public taste and lifted it 
above this trash — it was the publication in cheap 
form of the English classics. And when the 
mind of the masses had been thus improved, the 
magazine became a success. 

One slow but unmistakable drift of fiction is 
toward the short story, and the carefully edited 
newspaper may hold the fiction of the future. 



Recognize the Unions. 

M. W. Stryker, LL.D. 
President of Hamilton College. 

UNIONS of labor have come to stay. Combi- 
nation and " community of interest " are their 
inherent right, also. They are a fact and a 
factor. They must be recognized. They are 
recognized, even in denying them recognition. 
A condition must be reckoned with. " Does the 
gentleman,"— said the matter of fact Speaker 
Reed to one who violently protested to the 
counting of the actual quorum,— " Does the gen- 
tleman deny that he is present? " 

Fingers in one's ears, is an ultimatum that two 
can play at. To hide under the bedclothes may 
comfort the child, but will not stop the thunder- 



I98 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

storm. Even to a criminal the law does not deny 
the right to choose his own attorney. The cre- 
dentials of any spokesman are from those who 
send him, not from those to whom he is sent. 
The principal accredits his agent. Organized 
capital speaks through its delegate ; organized 
labor has the same right. If a given envoy is 
difficult, austere, or offensive, so much the worse 
for those who commission him. Either party 
may request a different legate ; but to pre- 
scribe how he shall be chosen, or to refuse all, is 
to break off diplomatic relations. The right not 
to deal through self-sent meddlers, does not mod- 
ify the duty to recognize those who are properly 
endorsed. Only fatuity challenges the right of 
men to act and to speak collectively and by 
whom they will. Obviously one hundred thous- 
and workmen cannot state their case separately 
to ten thousand separate stockholders, or to ten 
executive boards. The question, as to Mr. Baer, 
or as to Mr. Mitchell, is not whether he is in the 
employ of those to whom he goes, but whether 
he is authorized by those from whom he comes. 
The contention of the operators that they may 
dictate just how their men shall approach them 
can not hold its ground before American com- 
mon sense • and fair play. It will fall ; it falls 
already ; for that public which does not quibble 
knows that practically the United Mine Workers 
as such, and in the person of John Mitchell, are 



RECOGNIZE THE UNIONS. 1 99 

before both the commission and the country. 
The arbitrary precept issues, so far, only in mu- 
tual exasperations, and furnishes the prolific 
opportunity of marplots. Any genuine effort to 
agree must listen to all parties claiming to be 
such. 

As to the alleged non-responsibility of the 
miners, because they are not incorporated, re- 
member that since they cannot be enjoined they 
cannot enjoin. It is even. Further remember 
that their adhesion to their word given is their 
whole capital. They know that the country 
watches them in this to see if they be men. 
Under immense temptation they have this sum- 
mer past kept their word. It is much. It is 
enough. Incorporation may be a wise device ; 
but it is not the first and great commandment ! 

As to " compulsory arbitration," who wants it? 
It is a contradiction in terms. The essence of 
arbitration is voluntary consent to take advice. 
If its obiter dicta are amicably accepted it is 
excellent. If it can compel it is but a new court, 
and we are where we started. Agreement and 
litigation are two opposite ways. If arbitration 
could be compulsory it would be superfluous. 

Oh, for the frank, hearty and open way, with 
real good will and no mental, or technical reser- 
vations on either side, satisfying the land of the 
intent of all concerned to meet all open ques- 
tions " fair and square ! " Why not take the 



200 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

short cut and disappoint the frantic, the mis- 
chievous, and the obtuse ! All the strong-hearted, 
the whole land over, would rejoice to see the 
merely headstrong set aside. 

" Does 'business' mean 'Die you, live I ?' 
Then 'Trade is trade' but sings a lie ; 
'Tis only war grown miserly ! " 

But, and moreover, not only must corporations 
give the freedom they take, not treating equity 
as a thing to be settled by an exparte dictum ; 
they must also admit and rectify their errors. 
The public at present believes that there has 
been evasion of law, that wages have been in 
many cases (not in all) inadequate, that the hire- 
ling has been oppressed by compulsory trade, 
that overweight tons have been exacted, that 
little boys have been cheated of life's blessings 
by premature labor, that not coal alone, but the 
hearts of children have gone into the ' breakers,' 
that sacred human life lies among the slate and 
the culm. 

Is it true ? End it! Is it false? For God's 
sake prove it so. The people demand to know, 
and when they know they will somehow compel 
substantial justice, before that vast, law-abiding, 
conservative opinion, which, just because Puri- 
tanism is so tremendously extant and potent, 
will get itself regarded and obeyed ! An asser- 
tion that certain men are " the trustees of God " 



RECOGNIZE THE UNIONS. 201 

can be warranted only by an equitable and God- 
fearing administration of the trust. 

All possession, is a public trust. Property is 
sacred only because person is sacred. Ahab may 
not covet Naboth's vineyard, for the little is as 
dear to him to whom it is all, as the much is to 
the mighty. 

The great doctrine of "All for each," accepted, 
can alone replace the rights " strained from that 
fair use," and allay the antagonisms of labor 
against other labor, of capital against other cap- 
ital, and of labor and capital against each other. 

No true man desires to eat his bread only in 
the sweat of other men's brows. There is some- 
thing higher than having, it is being. The bit- 
terness of attack upon other's possessions is only 
a new proof of the extraordinary importance 
which we attach to possession itself. 

" While it doth study to have what it would, 
It doth forget to do the thing it should." 

In that world for which the Carpenter died, 
his gospel is abroad. " To love one's neighbors 
as one's self " is his law. To Him "the chief is 
the servant of all." To " do business upon Chris- 
tian principles " means far more than not appar- 
ently to trample the eighth commandment. The 
Son of Man will have His way. It is Puritan 
not to doubt that, and to work for it. The Rock 
of the Ages is the only bedrock of a just human 



202 BEST AMERICAN ORA TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

society. " Whosoever shall fall upon it shall be 
broken ; but upon whomsoever it shall fall it 
will grind him to powder! " 

Is this " all a sermon ? " Make it a song ! 

Good men in a good land, and peace to them 
all ; this is the doctrine and the zeal of the Mod- 
ern Puritan, entering into the labors of his 
fathers. 

Man! God! Conscience! And the law — the 
law of Christ ! 



America a World Power. 

Archbishop John Ireland. 

What I may speak of on this occasion is 
results of the war manifest even at this hour to 
America and to the world, transcending and in- 
dependent of all treaties of peace, possessing for 
America and for the world a meaning far 
mightier than accumulation of material wealth, or 
commercial concessions, or territorial extension. 

To do great things, to meet fitly great respon- 
sibilities, a nation, like a person, must be 
conscious of its dignity and its power. The 
consciousness of what she is and what she may 
be has come to America. She knows that she is 
a great nation. The elements of greatness were 
not imparted to her by the war, but they were re- 
vealed to her by the war, and their vitality and 



AMERICA A WORLD POWER. 203 

significance were increased through the war. 
To take its proper place among the other nations 
of the earth a nation must be known, as she is, 
to those nations. The world, to-day as never 
before, knows and confesses the greatness and 
the power of America. The world to-day ad- 
mires and respects America. The young giant 
of the West, heretofore neglected and almost 
despised in his remoteness and isolation, is now 
moving as becomes his stature. The world sees 
what he is and pictures what he will be. All 
this does not happen by chance or accident. An 
all-ruling Providence directs the movements of 
humanity. What we witness is a momentous 
dispensation from the Master of Men. 

To-day we proclaim a new order of things. 
America is too great to be isolated from the 
world around her and beyond her. She is a 
world-power, to whom no world-interest is alien, 
whose voice reaches afar, whose spirit travels 
across seas and mountain ranges to most distant 
continents and islands ; and with America goes 
far and wide what America in her grandest ideal 
represents — democracy and liberty, a govern- 
ment of the people, by the people, for the 
people. This is Americanism, more than Ameri- 
can territory, or American shipping, or American 
soldiery. Where this grandest ideal of Ameri- 
can life is not held supreme, America has not 
reached ; where this ideal is supreme, America 



204 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

reigns. The vital significance of America's 
triumphs is not understood unless by those 
triumphs is understood the triumph of democ- 
racy and of liberty. 

That at times wonderful things come through 
war we must admit, but that they come through 
war, and not through methods of peaceful justice, 
we must ever regret. When they do come 
through war their beauty and grandeur are 
dimmed by the memory of the sufferings and 
carnage which were their price. We say in 
defence of war that its purpose is justice, but is 
it worthy of Christian civilization that there is* 
no other way to justice than war, that nations 
are forced to stoop to the methods of the animal 
and the savage ? Time was when individuals 
gave battle to one another in the name of jus- 
tice ; it was the time of social barbarism. Tri- 
bunals have since taken to themselves the 
administration of justice, and how much better it 
is for the happiness and progress of mankind ! 

It is force or chance that decides the issue of 
the battle. Justice herself is not heard. The 
decision of justice is what it was before the 
battle, the judgment of one party. Must we not 
hope that, with the widening influence of reason 
and of religion among men, the day is approach- 
ing when justice shall be enthroned upon a great 
international tribunal, before which nations shall 
bow, demanding from it judgment and peace? 



AMERICA A WORLD POWER. 20$ 

It was America's great soldier who said, 
" Though I have been trained as a soldier and 
have participated in many battles, there never 
was a time when, in my opinion, some way could 
not have been found of preventing the drawing 
of the sword. I look forward to an epoch when 
a court, recognized by all nations, will settle in- 
ternational differences, instead of keeping large 
standing armies as they do in Europe." Shall 
we not allow the words of General Grant to go 
forth as the message of America ? 

It was Wellington who said, " Take my word 
for it, if you had seen but one day of war you 
would pray to Almighty God that you might 
never see such a thing again." It was Napoleon 
who said, " The sight of a battle-field after the 
fight is enough to inspire princes with a love of 
peace and a horror of war." War, be thou gone 
from my soul's sight ! I thank the good God 
that thy ghastly spectre stands no longer upon 
the thresholds of the homes of my fellow-coun- 
trymen in America or of my fellow-men in distant 
Andalusia. I ask heaven : When shall humanity 
rise to such heights of reason and of religion 
that war shall be impossible, and stories of 
battle-fields but the saddening echoes of primi- 
tive ages of the race ? 

America, the eyes of the world are upon thee. 
Thou livest for the world. The new era is shed- 
ding its light upon thee, and through thee upon 



206 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

the world. Thy greatness and thy power daze 
me ; thy responsibilities to God and to humanity 
daze me — I would say affright me. America, 
thou failing, democracy and liberty fail through- 
out the world. And now, America, the country 
of our pride, of our love, of our hope, we remit 
thee for to-day and for to-morrow into the hands 
of the Almighty God under whose protecting 
aegis thou canst not fail, whose commandments 
are the supreme rule of truth and of righteous- 
ness. 



Competition. 

Jacob Gould Schurman, D. Sc, LL. D. 
President of Cornell University. 

THERE is a growing number of respectable 
persons with benevolent impulses, who see in the 
individualistic structure of modern society and in 
that competition which is its correlate, the root 
of all evil, the terrible poison of that righteous- 
ness which alone exalteth a nation. 

This is a very striking and suggestive phenome- 
non. Some of the best people in the world 
agreeing with the worst in repudiating a principle 
to which more than to any other we owe our 
modern civilization ! If Darwinism be true, the 
very existence of our species is due to competi- 



COMPETITION. 207 

tion. In the struggle for life, man emerged and 
he survived because he was the fittest to survive, 
but competition has ever since kept human life 
from fouling by stagnation. Through the rivalry 
of nations, the moral government of the world is 
effected ; the brave, the active, the intelligent, 
the virtuous nations are the scourge of God to 
sweep away the lazy, the vicious and the ignorant 
nations. 

Arts, literature, science, philosophy, politics, 
inventions, necessities, refinements ; all are the 
products of minds stirred and quickened by the im- 
pulse of rivalry. The Homeric epic is our oldest 
poetry, but it is a collection of songs which were 
chanted by troubadors in contest. The Greek 
drama is the model of the world, and save for 
Shakespeare it has never been equaled. But the 
Greek dramatists wrote their plays for prizes 
which were adjudged by popular vote. The 
Greeks are our ideal of progress, liberal culture 
and refinement ; and I know no foreign nation 
whose minds were so keenly sensitive to motives of 
rivalry. In the modern world, America presents 
the most conspicuous field for the illustration of 
competition. Columbus goes ahead of all the 
others in discovering it. The English outdid the 
French in gaining possession of it, and the Ameri- 
cans finally conquered independence from the 
English. And what prolific and multifarious 
competition has since obtained in population, in 



208 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

politics, in industry, in letters, and in all the in- 
strumentalities of trade, commerce and transpor- 
tation ! Without competition the new world 
would be no America, for, as Emerson says, 
" America is only another name for opportunity." 
Here there is opportunity for subsistence, com- 
fort, wealth, education, high position, character, 
attainment, and in a word, manhood, opportunity 
open to every child of our people. 

All reform is gradual, piece by piece. We can- 
not risk the experiment of turning society upside 
down and standing it on its head to see how it 
looks. Of course, there are inequalities in the 
world ; there always have been ; there always will 
be ; but there are fewer to-day than ever before in 
the history of society, and fewer here than in any 
other part of the globe. I do not say this to lay 
a flattering unction to your souls. I say it for 
your encouragement, for there is much still to do. 
Let us plod along on the old path, aiding by a 
stroke here and a push there to bring in the reign 
of liberty, equality and fraternity. Let us not be 
led astray by will-o'-the-wisps, by social panaceas 
of any sort. Let us note clearly what can be 
done, and what under these terrestrial conditions, 
with such a human nature as we are endowed 
with, is altogether impossible. Man is what he 
is. But he is improvable. Self-love and sociabil- 
ity are the dominant impulses of his nature. 
Competition is good, not evil. Instead of sup- 



THE GENERAL WELFARE. 209 

pressing it I demand that men shall compete with 
one another in deeds of kindness and beneficence 
as they now do in transactions that lead to gain, 
or profit, or fame. The need of the world is more 
competition, not less ; competition in self-sacri- 
ficing generosity as well as in self-asserting ac- 
quisitiveness. Why not rivalry in living for 
others as well as in living for ourselves ? Let 
selfishness prevail, let men live simply to acquire, 
and no socialist is needed to pronounce the doom 
of human society. But the cure is not govern- 
mental socialism but the fresh individualism 
transfused and glorified by the social spirit, the 
spirit of kindness, of helpfulness, and of merciful 
justice. The salvation of the race lies not in 
constrained virture, but in free individual effort, 
and the unbought peace of brotherly love. 



The General Welfare. 

Hon. Whitelaw Reid. 

We are in the Philippines, as we are in the 
West Indies because duty sent us; and we shall 
remain because we have no right to run away 
from our duty, even if it does involve far more 
trouble than we foresaw when we plunged into 
the war that entailed it. The call to duty, when 
once plainly understood, is a call Americans 
never fail to answer : while to calls of interest 



2 1 BBS T A ME RICA AT OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

they have often shown themselves incredulous or 
contemptuous. 

The Constitution we revere was ordained " to 
promote the general welfare," and he is untrue 
to its purpose who squanders opportunities. 
Never before have they been showered upon us 
in such bewildering profusion. Are the Ameri- 
can people to rise to the occasion ; are they to 
be as great as their country ? Or shall the his- 
torian record that at this unexampled crisis they 
were controlled by timid ideas and short-sighted 
views, and so proved unequal to the duty and 
the opportunity which unforeseen circumstances 
brought to their doors? The two richest archi- 
pelagoes in the world are practically at our dis- 
posal. The greatest ocean on the globe has 
been put in our hands, the ocean that is to bear 
the commerce of the twentieth century. In the 
face of this prospect shall we prefer, with the 
teeming population that century is to bring to 
us, to remain a " hibernating nation, living off its 
own fat — a hermit nation ? " 

Are we to be discouraged by the cry that the 
new possessions are worthless ? Not while we 
remember how often and under what circum- 
stances we have heard that cry before. Half the 
public men of the period denounced Louisiana 
as worthless. Eminent statesmen made merry in 
Congress over the idea that Oregon or Washing- 
ton could be of any use. Daniel Webster, in the 



THE GENERAL WELFARE. 211 

most solemn and authoritative tones Massachu- 
setts has ever employed, assured his fellow-Sena- 
tors that in his judgment California was not 
worth a dollar. Nobody doubts the advantage 
our dealers have derived in the promotion of trade, 
from controlling political relations and frequent 
intercourse. There are those who deny that 
" trade follows the flag," but even they admit 
that it leaves, if the flag does. And independent 
of these advantages, and reckoning by mere dis- 
tance, we still have the better of any European 
rivals in the Philippines. Now, assume that the 
Filipino would have far fewer wants than the 
Kanaka or his coolie laborer, and would do far 
less work for the means to gratify them. Admit, 
too, that, with "the open door," our political 
relations and frequent intercourse could have 
barely a fifth or a sixth of the effect there they 
have had in the Sandwich Islands. Roughly cast 
up even that result, and say whether it is a 
value which the United States should throw 
away as not worth considering! 

And the greatest remains behind. For the 
trade in the Philippines will be but a drop in 
bucket compared to that of China, for which 
they give us an unapproachable foothold. But 
let it never be forgotten that the confidence of 
Orientals goes only to those whom they recog- 
nize as strong enough and determined enough 
always to hold their own and protect their rights ! 



2 1 2 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

The worst possible introduction for the Asiatic 
trade would be an irresolute abandonment of 
our foothold because it was too much trouble to 
keep, or because some Malay and half-breed in- 
surgents said they wanted us away. 

Have you considered for whom we hold these 
advantages in trust ? They belong not merely 
to the seventy-five millions now within our bor- 
ders, but to all who are to extend the fortunes 
and preserve the virtues of the Republic in the 
coming century. Their number cannot increase 
in the startling ratio this century has shown — if 
they did the population of the United States a 
hundred years hence would be over twelve hun- 
dred millions. That ratio is impossible, but 
nobody gives reasons why we should not increase 
half as fast. Suppose we do actually increase 
only one-fourth as fast in the twentieth century as 
in the nineteenth. To what height would not the 
three hundred millions of Americans, whom even 
that ratio foretells, bear up the seething indus- 
trial activities of the Continent ! To what cor 
ner of the world they would not need to carry 
their commerce ? What demands on tropical 
productions would they not make ? What out- 
lets for their adventurous youth would they not 
require ? 

With such a prospect before us, who thinks 
that we should shrink from an enlargement of 
our national sphere because of the limitations 



THE GENERAL WELFARE. 213 

that bound, or the dangers that threatened, be- 
fore railroads, before ocean steamers, before tele- 
graphs and ocean cables, before the enormous 
development of our manufactures, and the train- 
ing of executive and organizing faculties in our 
people on a constantly increasing scale for gene- 
rations. Does the prospect alarm ? Is it said 
that our nation is already too great ; that all its 
magnificent growth only adds to the conflicting 
interests that must eventually tear it asunder? 
What cement, then, like that of a great common 
interest beyond our borders, that touches not 
merely the conscience but the pocket and the 
pride of all alike, and marshals us in the face of 
the world, standing for our own ? 

What, then, is the conclusion of the whole 
matter? Hold fast! Stand firm in the place 
where Providence has put you, and do the duty a 
just responsibility for your own past acts imposes. 
Support the army you sent there. Stop wasting 
valuable strength by showing how things might 
be different if something different had been done 
a year and a half ago. Use the educated thought 
of the country for shaping best its course now, 
instead of chiefly finding fault with its history. 
Bring the best hope of the future, the colleges 
and the generation they are training, to exert 
the greatest influence and accomplish the most 
good by working intelligently in line with the 
patriotic aspirations and the inevitable tendencies 



2 14 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

of the American people, rather than against 
them. Unite the efforts of all men of good-will to 
make the appointment of any person to these new 
and strange duties beyond seas impossible save for 
proved fitness, and his removal impossible save 
for cause. Rally the colleges and the churches, 
and all they influence, the brain and the con- 
science of the country, in a combined and irre- 
sistible demand for a genuine trained and pure 
civil service in our new possessions, that shall 
put to shame our detractors, and show to the 
world the Americans of this generation equal 
still to the work of civilization and colonization, 
and leading the development of the coming cen- 
tury as bravely as their fathers led it in the last. 



National Unity and the State University. 

Wm. L, Prather, LL. D. 
President of the University of Texas. 

The idea of national unity is as yet young. 
We have been geographically a nation, territori- 
ally a nation, governmentally a nation, ethically 
a nation — for a century. But the development 
of a true national unity in the fullest sense of the 
term is one of the great problems for the educa- 
tion of the future — a problem whose significance 
and importance we must be fully awake to. 

Think of the intellectual triumphs which await 



NATIONAL UNITY. 21 5 

a nation of eighty million souls, enjoying oppor- 
tunities of culture that are accessible to all, from 
the meanest to the highest, untrammeled by arti- 
ficial social distinctions, possessing a quickness 
of intellect and adaptability that goes hand in 
hand with solid and sturdy moral character, to 
form the best foundation for the best kind of 
intellectual culture ; and possessing those ele- 
ments and characteristics in a measure and 
degree unequaled among the nations of the 
world. This is our opportunity, and if we fail to 
realize it, we are failing of a full conception of 
our national duty. 

One of the happiest results which the inter- 
communication of education has wrought is the 
larger ability to discuss philosophically, wisely, 
and with less passion and prejudice, the great 
questions affecting us as a nation and parts of 
the same nation. We should never forget that 
we are brothers, members of the same house- 
hold ; that this nation is a family of states ; and 
that whatever affects favorably or unfavorably 
the welfare of one, affects the whole nation. We 
must rise to a true conception of this idea if we 
would in the future avoid sectionalism, and secure 
the welfare of the whole people rather than the 
welfare of a particular section. Truth and frank- 
ness should characterize our dealings with each 
other as individuals, as states, and as a whole 
people. One of the most potent forces now 



2 1 6 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

contributing to the development of such a 
national sympathy is the State University. 

If it be true that " the arrival of democracy is 
the fact of our time, which overshadows all 
other facts," the very incarnation of true democ- 
racy is found in the modern State University. 
A university for the people without distinctions 
of rank is the regenerating thought of the new 
world. In the glorious progress of American 
manhood and womanhood, universities are the 
torchbearers of American civilization. It is a 
serious error on the part of our politicians to 
charge that the great teachers and thinkers of 
our universities are mere theorists. No wiser 
step has been taken by our rulers than when 
they utilized in the affairs of government the 
training, the learning, and the wisdom of the 
scholars of this nation. They brought to their 
aid the lessons of all history, and bravely applied 
them to the solution of new and perplexing prob- 
lems, thereby enriching the achievements of 
American statesmanship. To these great centers 
of learning, planted in every state of this rapidly 
expanding union, as well as to our common 
schools, we must look in the future for that stal- 
wart and vitalizing American sentiment which 
shall not only withstand, but shall quickly trans- 
form and assimilate, the uninstructed foreign 
population now flocking to our shores. Our 
safety as a people demands a wise and vigorous 



NATIONAL UNITY. 217 

effort to educate the masses to an intelligent 
appreciation of the blessings which we as free- 
men enjoy. The educational forces of this 
country are doing a great work towards breaking 
down sectionalism, allaying party strife and pro- 
moting the peace, prosperity and unity of this 
nation. 

, It is my clear conviction that it would be wise 
for the American people to cease establishing 
new colleges and universities, and to concentrate 
their efforts in strenghtening those already 
founded, thereby increasing their power and 
efficiency. The State University at the head of 
the state system of education is an evolution of 
the best western thought, and the noblest civic 
achievement of the commonwealth. There should 
be the closest and most harmonious relation 
between the university and all the educational 
agencies of the State. As the university grows, 
its magnetic life should pervade every district 
school, and be an inspiration and blessing to all 
good learning. The system of elementary and 
secondary education should culminate in the 
university. 

If the newer universities, thus developed from 
the expanding intellectual life of our people, 
are tied in bonds of closest sympathy and frater- 
nal co-operation to the older universities already 
established, and so unite with them to maintain 
the highest ideals of American life and American 



2 1 8 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

thought, the time is not far distant when Ameri- 
can culture shall be a national culture, exerting 
on the nations of the earth an influence, as wide 
and potent as was that of Greece and Rome, in 
uplifting and enlightening the world. 



Our Relations with the World. 

Hon,. Franklin MacVeagh. 

There are three forces driving us to expanded 
relations with the world, and we have arrived at 
that particular period when these forces are be- 
coming especially active and dominant. The 
first of them is our trade. It is inevitable that, 
more and more, from this day forth, our nation 
will set out to become the greatest trading people 
ever known in the world. 

No nation exists with equal facilities or equal 
necessities for an unprecedented commerce. We 
not only have in soil and minerals an easy and 
cheap abundance, heretofore unknown in a like 
combination ; not only has nature lavishly 
equipped us, but we have a people unprecedented 
in manufacturing and commercial gifts. We have 
capital that is ample and growing, and workmen 
of practically a new race. We have a population 
of vast and constantly growing proportions, with 



OUR RELATIONS WITH THE WORLD. 219 

scarcely a drone in the great hive. Such are the 
elements of our facilities for foreign trade. 

There will be no seas without American ships, 
and no ports without American goods carried 
there under our own flag. For, in the growing 
cheapness and excellence of our manufactures, 
nothing will be more cheaply and excellently 
built than ships. And with an expanding com- 
merce and a broadening merchant marine what 
are more inevitable than universal relations be- 
tween our nation and the whole of mankind ? 

Another of the forces which are carrying us on 
to extended relations with the world is the force 
of our institutions and political ideas. As I said 
at the beginning, there is a growing issue between 
our institutions and ideas and those opposing 
institutions and ideas which they are steadily 
supplanting throughout the world. America 
especially stands for these institutions and ideas. 
We could not see them defeatedo We must de- 
fend them. They have served well out; prosper- 
ity, our happiness, and our manhood. Hence- 
forth we shall serve well their domination of the 
world. 

Free government, free commerce, and free men 
— those first essentials of democracy — are the 
greatest good, the greatest blessings the political 
world can know ; and there is in our democratic 
people that inherent and abiding fidelity to demo- 
cratic institutions which has kept us faithful 



220 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

within our own borders, and is forcing us, as in 
this war with Spain, to be faithful on the larger 
stage of the world. Our cry for free institutions 
in Cuba was the cry of democracy speaking 
through the voice of our nation. 

Democracy does not demand war, but it does 
demand justice. It demands freedom. It de- 
mands that the modern man who wants freedom 
shall have freedom. The Monroe Doctrine was 
democracy's first great challenge. It was our 
service. And it is wonderful that any nation 
should have had a spirit equal to that great self- 
dedication. Any futher step is but another stage 
of democratic evolution. 

Who can doubt at this day that democracy is 
a great militant force, or that it will tend to drive 
an influential and powerful nation like ours into 
complete relations with the world ? Democracy 
knows, better than any other of humanity's great 
forces, that war is not the best agent of ideas, 
and the activities of democracy, or of democratic 
governments, do not mean war. Democracy can 
be militant without entanglements or conflicts, 
but it cannot be militant and isolated at the same 
time. 

The third of the forces driving our nation on 
to closer relations with the world is the sense of 
responsibility inherent in a great, free nation and 
the consequent impracticability of associating 
pure isolation with national greatness and 



OUR RELATIONS WITH THE WORLD, 221 

grandeur. No truly great nation ever did or 
ever will for a very long time remain isolated or 
feed its soul on indifference to what goes on out- 
side itself. A truly great nation must become a 
part of the great world and take its part of the 
world's burdens ; take its share of responsibility 
for the world's civilization. 

Thoughts of human progress are the necessary 
food of noble minds. Dreams of universal amelio- 
rations are the nourishment of all great spirits. 
The isolation of greatness is inconceivable. 
Greatness is responsible ; greatness is interested 
in all related great things ; greatness has relation- 
ships, responsibilities, duties, which are on the 
scale of its own proportions. And a really great 
nation must feel responsibilities to the great 
movement of mankind, as represented in the ac- 
tivities of all the world together. You might as 
well expect a great man to limit his interests to 
the life of his immediate family as to expect a 
great nation to live entirely within itself. It is 
against nature, against character, against all 
human impulse. Therefore this growing sense 
of necessary touch on the part of our great nation 
with the civilization and interests of mankind. 



222 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO- DA Y. 

The Problem of The Philippines. 

Hon. Henry M. Teller. 
Used by permission. 

It is certain to me that the interest of the 
United States does not demand our presence in 
the Philippines on our present footing. 

After nearly three years of conflict, after years 
of actual warfare, with a large army in the Philip- 
pines — what is the situation? How many we 
have left there, and how many have returned to 
go to early graves, how much evil we have 
inflicted upon our people by that course, indepen- 
dent of the cost in dollars and cents, God alone 
knows. No human being can tell us to-day what 
will be the influence upon a great army there 
amidst all the temptations and vices of a tropical 
climate and among a tropical people. 

It remains yet to be determined by the future 
how much we are to be damaged, not alone in 
our purse, but how much we are to be cursed in 
our physical and mental and moral manhood. 

I can measure the dollars ; I can count what it 
costs in that respect ; I can consider what it takes 
out of the pockets of the American people ; and 
with our great wealth, great as the cost is, I will 
not put it for a minute by the degradation that 
has come to American manhood in the soldiers 
that we have sent to those islands. I will not 
attempt to measure it by the side of the degrada- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE PHILIPPINES. 223 

tion that has come to the whole American people 
by our contact there, by lessening their respect 
for those great, eternal truths that no Christian 
nation can for a moment forget or overlook. 
The worse evil that is befalling us is not the 
money we are paying out. That we can pay ; 
that we can forget, great as it is and burdensome 
as it is ; but the other will remain with us always, 
a debt never to be paid. There will be no 
redeemer for that. 

Is there one here who will say that he has no 
sympathy with the struggling Filipinos? Can 
anyone fail to sympathize with them when he 
sees death and destruction measured out to them 
and knows, as he must know, that those men 
believe at least that they are fighting for home 
and fireside, doing that which the whole world 
has declared to be a virtue of superior character. 

The Senator from Massachusetts tells us that 
those people must submit. The Senator from 
Ohio in impassioned terms declared to us that 
the American Army would stay there until every 
Filipino acknowledged its supremacy. He might 
have added, I suppose, until he either acknow- 
ledged its supremacy or went to his grave. 

Why are those men in arms against the United 
States? I could understand why Aguinaldo, an 
ambitious Asiatic, might take up arms against us, 
for he wanted power and he wanted the advan- 
tage that he could secure as the leader of the 



224 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

people. But what of the rank and file ? What 
do the common Filipinos mean when they stand 
in battle before us and when they are ready to 
go to their deaths in the strife ? Do they not 
mean that they are standing in defense of what 
they believe to be right ? 

As an American I can not feel happy over the 
defeat of, and I can not myself wish that there 
should come disaster to, American arms. But I 
can not but respect the people who believe that 
we are attempting to subject them and put upon 
them a government and a system of civilization 
that they dislike. I can not help feeling for them, 
and I believe every man here feels for them. He 
may say they are misguided, that they are igno- 
rant ; but after all the man who, when he thinks 
his home is assailed, stands in front of it with 
his gun is a model of excellency the world over. 

The American people came to their existence 
as a nation through blood. We had a long and 
bloody war — seven years of contest with the 
then ruling power of the world — but it was not 
longer than the war in the Philippine Islands 
will be. A Senator has said to me that there is 
no counterpart between our condition and that 
of these people. That is right ; there is not. 
We were Englishmen. We had come from Eng- 
land and settled here under English charters and 
English law, but when England attempted to 
put upon us a tax that we believed she should 



GENIUS AND CHARACTER OE GRANT. 225 

not we went to war. We did not take up arms 
because of any atrocities committed upon us. 
We did not go to war because we were suffering 
from anything that Parliament had done. We 
fought for a principle. As Webster said, in the 
Senate, in 1834, we went to war against a pream- 
ble. We went to war against a parliamentary 
declaration that England had a right to govern 
us and provide for taxation of the American col- 
onies without their consent. When Parliament 
passed a resolution declaring that the right 
existed to enact all the legislation required for 
the colonies, Mr. Wilkes, a member of the House 
of Commons, said, referring to it, " It is the com- 
pendium of slavery," and when Lord North said, 
" The tax is trifling," Englishmen in both Houses 
responded, " The American people are not fight- 
ing because of the size of the tax." They were 
fighting because of the violation of the principle 
that taxation and representation under English 
law must go together. Oh, no ; the conditions 
are not the same, but we had the right to fight. 
If we were justified in resisting, so is the Filipino. 



Genius and Character of Grant. 

Hon. Clark E. Carr. 
Contributed by the author. Abridged. 

In estimating the military genius of General 
Grant, we must remember that the rebellion was 



226 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

attempted under the idea and the firm belief 
that, while the government might win battles, 
so great a number of brave people, inhabiting so 
vast a country, could never be conquered ; that 
when the Union armies were victorious, the 
rebels would always be able to retreat, and re- 
cuperate, and thus indefinitely prolong the strug- 
gle. This was the opinion of some of the greatest 
generals of Europe. It was confirmed in a great 
degree by the early experience of the war. We 
might have gone on gaining victory for many 
years and still the object for which the war was 
waged by the Union army been as far from be- 
ing attained, as when we commenced. When 
General Grant came to the front in supreme 
command the policy was not merely to gain vic- 
tories but to conquer armies. 

General Grant will be remembered for his suc- 
cess in fighting and winning battles, in which he 
personally commanded. He was always ready to 
give battle, and it may be said that with him 
victory became a habit. So regularly and con- 
stantly successful did he become, that when he 
was engaged in battle the country came to ex- 
pect and rely upon victory. 

His great fame as a military chieftain will rest 
upon the mighty and successful plans, and com- 
binations, by which and through which, every 
battle fought by every Union army, moving over 
a vast expanse of country, extending thousands 



GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF GRANT. 22*] 

of miles, was made to contribute to the grand 
result — plans and combinations by which and 
through which officers and men, far away from 
each other, fighting at Nashville, at Atlanta, 
around Mobile, and marching to the sea were as 
literally heroes of the final overthrow and sur- 
render as those who were present and wit- 
nessed the grand consummation, to which each, 
in his own sphere, had contributed. 

Other great captains may have won as brilliant 
victories as General Grant, but none have made 
such great conquests of armies. Others may 
have made as brilliant marches, and have suc- 
ceeded in more brilliant assaults, but none have 
been so frequently and uniformly successful. 
There is a disposition to compare his military 
career with those of Marlborough, Napoleon, 
Wellington and the great Frederick. It is enough 
for us to remember how we turned to him when 
in distress, and that he never failed. 

" The laurel wreath which decks the soldier's 
brow " was not enough to satisfy the people who 
delighted to honor General Grant. They must 
each by his individual expression recognize his 
great services to his country by making him 
Chief Ruler. Modestly he accepted the great 
responsibility, faithfully he performed its duties. 
Without any of the experiences incident to politi- 
cal life it is not remarkable that he made mis- 
takes, but taken all in all it may well be 



228 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

claimed that scarcely any other administrations 
were more wise or beneficent in their results. His 
was the statesmanship of common sense. He is 
certainly every day more and more highly appre- 
ciated. His errors may be traced to the noblest 
element in his character : his unbounded gratitude 
and devotion to those who had befriended him 
and his wife and children in their struggles, while 
in poverty and want. General Grant's love of 
home, and friends, and kindred, was not eradicated 
nor dimmed by his elevation to power. It may 
well be assumed that upon this element of his 
nature was builded that patriotism, that intense 
love of country, which prompted him to such 
great achievements. 

He was known as the " Silent Man, " yet there 
is scarcely another American statesman who has 
said so many things that are remembered. His 
" immediate and unconditional surrender ; " his 
" I propose to move immediately upon your 
works ; " his " I propose to fight it out on this 
line if it takes all summer ; " his " Let us have 
peace ; " his " The easiest way to bring about the 
repeal of a bad law is to enforce it ; " his " The 
humble soldier who carried a musket is entitled 
to as much credit for the results of the war as 
those who were in command ; " his reply to the 
Lord Mayor of London, " Although a soldier by 
education and profession, I have never felt any 
sort of fondness for war, I have never advocated 



GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF GRANT. 229 

it except as a means of peace;" his " The free 
school is the promoter of that intelligence 
which is to preserve us a free nation ; " his in- 
junction that " no reduction be made in the 
wages paid to working men and mechanics on 
account of the reduction of the hours of labor; " 
his declaration that " If I had fallen, if all our 
generals had fallen, there were ten thousand be- 
hind us who would have done our work just as 
well ; " all these sentiments and many more are 
remembered and treasured by vast numbers of 
people. 

It was the privilege of the writer to become 
acquainted with General Grant under peculiar 
circumstances. We had gone up to Pittsburg 
Landing to bring home Illinois wounded soldiers. 
Our mission brought us directly to his head- 
quarters. He received us kindly but we saw at 
once that a great cloud was hanging over him. 
Within a few steps of his tent were the head- 
quarters of General Halleck, the commander of 
the whole military department. On account of 
the clamor against General Grant for his action 
on the first day of the battle of Shiloh, General 
Halleck had come himself to oversee and direct 
the movements of the army. Grant was prac- 
tically superceded. There was great dissatisfac- 
tion on the part of his friends, that the hero of 
Fort Henry, of Donelson and Shiloh, should be 
so treated. While nominally in command of the 



230 BEST AMERICAN ORA TIONS OF TO-DA F. 

army he was really only in command of his per- 
sonal staff. Governor Yates invited him to come 
on board of our steamer and dine with us. He 
readily accepted the invitation stating that he 
had " nothing to do. " He was with us most of 
the afternoon and until after night fall. I never 
was more astonished than by the tone of his con- 
versation. He talked of the battle of Shiloh, ex- 
plained how the enemy massed his forces upon 
one point, declared it was not a surprise, ex- 
plained the means adopted to recover lost 
ground, spoke of General Halleck's moving his 
headquarters to the field, gave us something of 
that officer's military history, expressed the 
greatest admiration for him, and seemed rather 
pleased than otherwise that he had come. He 
told us of how he was advising General Halleck, 
and expressed the greatest anxiety to have him 
succeed. He spoke of his own position, and 
said that he had not nor should he complain ; 
that he was in for the war and should stay as 
long as any other man stayed, and do his best 
while it lasted, and declared that if it was 
thought he could do more and be more effective 
in that position he would carry a musket. We 
expressed our indignation at the treatment he 
had received, but he answered not a word. We 
thought and afterwards talked of the complaints 
of so many officers, high and low, and contrasted 
them with him. I thought of the relative posi- 



SO VEREIGNTY FOLL O WS THE FLAG. 2 3 1 

tion of the two Generals at Pittsburg Landing, 
when, at the close of the war, while General of all 
the Armies of the United States, General Grant 
received me at Washington, with General Hal- 
leck seated near him, who was Chief of Staff. It 
has seemed to me that General Grant's action 
during those days while in the valley of humilia- 
tion was sublime. I have seen him in the midst 
of his great generals ; I have seen him when 
surrounded by his Cabinet ; I have seen him in 
the home circle at Galena and Washington ; I 
twice saw him, in the midst of a vast concourse 
of people, inaugurated as President of the United 
States ; I saw him when hundreds of thou- 
sands of people greeted him at Chicago upon his 
return to his native land. But when I try to re- 
call his face and features, he always comes back 
to me as he sat there on that summer evening 
at Pittsburg Landing, serene and self-poised, the 
conqueror of himself. 



Sovereignty Follows The Flag. 

George R. Peck. 

The Spanish War was not the war of any State, 
but of all the States ; it was the war of a nation 
strong in its high sense of right, and strong 
because it held in its keeping the cause of justice 



232 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

and humanity. American sovereignty follows the 
American flag. If it leads across western seas to 
the east, or floats over the Oregon washing the 
foam of two oceans from her prow as she speeds 
onward to the fight, the national spirit sails with 
it to the uttermost. To-day the New Union 
faces new duties. Wars are never exactly what 
men foresee. The dominion of the Republic has 
been enormously enlarged, but it was not the 
lust of conquest that brought it about. It was 
the logic of events that were greater than men. 
We may trust the United States, and we may 
trust the deliberate judgment of its people. 
Thinking of all that is past, considering the pres- 
ent and its problems, our look must yet be for- 
ward, as is the habit of brave men and of states- 
men who are fit to rule. 

Speaking in the presence of the President of 
the United States, whom we honor for what he 
is and for what he represents, we all unite in 
acknowledging his sincerity of purpose, his wis- 
dom, and the high patriotism which by day and 
by night has guided him in difficult situations 
and unexpected emergencies. I know of no duty 
which can rest more solemnly upon the American 
people than that of sustaining and strengthening 
him in the great responsibilities he is bearing so 
bravely and so well. Statesmanship does not 
require absolute foreknowledge, but it does 
require the rare ability to meet conditions as 



SO VEREIGNTY FOLL O WS THE FLAG. 233 

they arise When Dewey sailed into the bay he 
readjusted in an hour the policies and aims of a 
century. He changed the balance and equilib- 
rium of nations, and served notice, with every 
shot he fired, that henceforth the United States 
must be counted. 

We have entered new fields, as advancing 
nations always do ; we have assumed new duties, 
as living nations always must. It may, indeed, 
be true that our fathers did not write out on 
parchment what must be done if, by the fortunes 
of war, our flag should be carried to islands and 
seas remote. But, gentlemen, the flag cannot 
come down. The institutions and the polity of a 
free republic are equal to new conditions, or they 
are worthless. A nation that cannot keep pace 
with what its own arms have accomplished is 
already catalogued with the incapable and the 
degenerate. The New Union, which war has 
welded more firmly together, summons us and 
leads us forward. It does not invite responsibil- 
ities nor shrink from them. History has been 
busy in these last eventful months, interfusing 
all the elements of our national life, so that the 
parts forget that they are parts, and remember 
only an indissoluble, indivisible, indestructible 
Union. 



234 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

The Conquerors. 

Hon. Cresswell MacLaughlin. 

I BELIEVE the conquerors of this civilization 
and the conquerors of all time are those triumph- 
ant principles which do not depend upon war. 
The strongest single, individual, divine human 
force on earth is conquering the human race 
through love. The time has passed when any- 
thing like brute force shall be admired. Napo- 
leon stood before the Sphinx interrogating its 
silence in vain. The questions he asked will 
never be answered. Even though the unfettered 
intellect of modern times surpasses in achievement 
all dreams of the ancients. The spirit of liberty, 
the assurance of independence, the democracy of 
education — these things have made the American 
people the hope of the world. Civil and religious 
liberty, the chance of childhood, the reward of 
merit regardless of wealth or social position, the 
awakening of the mind from its slumber of cen- 
turies, the dazzling splendor of invention, the 
stupendous accomplishments of Science, Art, 
Commerce — all these, coupled with a capacity 
for self-government demonstrated beyond doubt 
by every test of national endurance, makes the 
American people the balancing power of the 
world. And yet we are only standing upon the 
threshold of mystery, like little children still upon 
the portal of the ocean, charmed by the pebbles 



THE CONQUERORS. 235 

that are polished by the friction of the sea. The 
spectacles that would have paralyzed the sight of 
our ancestors have long ceased to fascinate us. 
The mind refuses to be astounded, neither shock 
of nature, nor discovery of genius disturbs the 
equilibrium of the American. Courage is the 
force of it all. Courage and the atmosphere of 
freedom. Courage in education and charity. 
Courage in invention, in execution, in construc- 
tion ; the knowledge and the nerve of the leaders 
in all conflicts that confront the advance of the 
race. Courage in the conception and building of 
mighty industries ; courage in conquering prob- 
lems of communication ; courage in the porten- 
tous tasks of civil, mining and mechanical engi- 
neering ; courage in the spirit of a stoic will to 
master the material world. Who can unfold the 
future ? Who can solve the riddle of another 
hundred years? As well ask the plans of Omni- 
potence. We work with the forces of energies 
unknown. We attack the principles of life and 
wrestle with the enigmas of God. We put our 
voice in a cylinder for the audience of coming 
ages. We whisper and the vibration of our 
thought resounds throughout the world. We 
check the charger of the racing wind and make 
a horse of air. We press a pin and the solemn 
night bursts into stars. But man is the same. 
Nature is the same. The chariot of the sun 
drives down the centuries and Time is the same. 



236 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OE TO-DA Y. 

Circumscribed by laws of gravitation and the 
grave, man is forever baffled by the Infinite. Man 
studies the heavens and registers the behavior of 
planets, he cherishes a star but he can never 
touch it, he sounds the deep but he can never 
stand upon its bottom, he tunnels the earth but 
he will never reach its centre, he sees the struc- 
ture of the body but he knows not the life that 
gives it god-like motion, he is aware of the com- 
plex wonder of the brain, but he will never know 
its mystery. A deluge may come and the treas- 
ures of time may be buried in oblivion, but man 
will be the same and Nature will be the same. 
Man will start out anew to study what he yearns 
to know. But he will never know. Arts may 
be lost but he will find them, civilization may 
vanish but he will restore it, yet all his work is 
human and he cannot rise beyond himself. The 
man dies, the individual disappears, the race goes 
on, the record is written in the rock and the obit- 
uary of genius is the history of the world. 

Ah, yes ! and love is the same and hope is the 
same and God is the same. 

In the grandeur of the age we realize how small 
we are. With all our vanity of learning what do 
we know? The little child is our philosopher. 
You cannot answer his questions, who will answer 
yours? Therefore the Twentieth Century must 
surpass all others in love, for that does not pass 
away. The way to make the world happy is to 



THE CONQUERORS. 237 

study the happiness of those who are in your 
home, in your workshop, in the circle of your 
life. The firmament is not made of a single sun, 
but by millions of systems of stars. 

Hope is on the countenance of the republic as 
with patience and determination they see the 
solid centuries of struggle passing in review ; 
each century stamping its image in the stones of 
history; each century moving upon a higher 
plan of possibility ; each assuming more porten- 
tous proportions — until the ninteenth and the 
last, glowing with enlightenment arises above the 
rest to an altitude of human grandeur amazing 
and sublime. And on the summit of this century, 
erect, with her face toward the sun, pregnant 
with peace for the world, fearless, faithful and 
calm, stands the Goddess of Liberty holding in 
one hand the sword and in the other education. 
On her brow rests a wreath of roses and on her 
neck sparkles the jewels of wealth. Her gar- 
ments fall in folds of grace upon a figure the 
companion of which Great Phideas never saw in 
his visions of Minerva, nor all the imagery of 
Greece could fashion such a queen. And her 
name is Peace and her name is Charity and her 
name is Virtue. She is the mother of Time and 
her children are order and law, education, liberty, 
patience and patriotism. At her feet are plead- 
ing empires and at her breasts nurse the nations 
of the world. 



238 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

"Let Us Have Peace." 

Hon. CarlSchurz. 
Contributed by the author. 

There are strange teachings put forth among 
us by some persons, that a war, from time to 
time, is by no means a misfortune, but rather a 
healthy exercise to stir up our patriotism, and to 
keep us from becoming effeminate. Indeed, 
there are some of them busily looking round for 
somebody to fight as the crazed Malay runs 
amuck looking for somebody to kill. The idea 
that the stalwart and hard working American 
people, engaged in subduing to civilization an 
immense continent, need foreign wars to pre- 
serve their manhood from dropping into effemi- 
nacy, or that their love of country will flag 
unless stimulated by hatred of somebody else, or 
that they must have bloodshed and devastation 
as an outdoor exercise in the place of other 
sports — such an idea is as preposterous as it is 
disgraceful and abominable. 

There are also corrupt politicians eager to 
plunder the public under a cheap guise of patri- 
otism, and unscrupulous speculators looking for 
gambling and pilfering opportunities in their 
country's trouble, and wishing for war as the 
piratical wrecker on his rocky shores wishes for 
fogs or hurricanes. They deserve the detestation 
of every decent man. 



" LET US HA VE PEACE." 239 

General Sherman, whose memory is dear to 
us all, is reported to have said, in his vigorous 
way : " You want to know what war is ? War is 
hell." And nobody who has seen war as he had, 
will question the truthfulness of this character- 
istic saying. True, war sometimes develops 
noble emotions and heroic qualities in individ- 
uals or in a people ; but war is hell for all that. If 
our boasted civilization and Christianity are to 
mean anything, they should mean this : No war 
is justifiable unless its cause or object stand in 
just proportion to its cost in blood, in destruc- 
tion, in human misery, in waste, in political cor- 
ruption, in social demoralization, in relapse of 
civilization ; and even then it is justifiable only 
when every expedient of statesmanship to avert 
it has been thoroughly exhausted. 

What is the rule of honor to be observed by a 
power so strong and so advantageously situated 
as this republic is? Of course, I do not expect 
it meekly to pocket real insults if they should be 
offered to it. But surely, it should not, as our 
boyish jingoes wish it to do, swagger about 
among the nations of the world, with a chip on 
its shoulder, and shaking its fist in everybody's 
face. Of course, it should not tamely submit to 
real encroachments upon its rights. But, surely, 
it should not, whenever its own notions of right 
or interest collide with the notions of others, fall 
into hysterics and act as if it really feared for its 



24O BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OE TO-DA Y. 

own security and its very independence. As a 
true gentleman, conscious of his strength and his 
dignity, it should be slow to take offence. In its 
dealings with other nations it should have scru- 
pulous regard, not only for their rights, but also 
for their self respect. With all its latent resources 
for war, it should be the great peace power of the 
world. It should never forget what a proud priv- 
ilege and what an inestimable blessing it is not 
to need and not to have big armies or navies to 
support. It should seek to influence mankind, 
not by heavy artillery, but by good example and 
wise counsil. It should see its highest glory, 
not in battles won, but in wars prevented. It 
should be so invariably just and fair, so trust- 
worthy, so good tempered, so conciliatory, that 
other nations would instinctively turn to it as 
their mutual friend and the natural adjuster of 
their differences, thus making it the greatest pre- 
server of the world's peace. 

This is not a mere idealistic fancy. It is the 
natural position of this great republic among the 
nations of the earth. It is its noblest vocation, 
and it will be a glorious day for the United 
States when the good sense and the self-respect 
of the American people see in this their " mani- 
fest destiny." It all rests upon peace. Is not 
this peace with honor ? There has, of late, been 
much loose speech about " Americanism." Is 
not this good Americanism? It is surely to-day 



HONOR TO THE PATRIOT SPY. 24 1 

the Americanism of those who love their country 
most. And I fervently hope that it will be and 
ever remain the Americanism of our children 
and children's children. 



Honor to the Patriot Spy. 

Edward Everett Hale, D. D. 

Celebrating Evacuation Day, the anniversary of the de- 
parture of the British troops from the independent United 
States, the Sons of the Revolution presented to the City of 
New York a bronze statue of Captain Nathan Hale, the 
young patriot who sacrificed his life in 1776 for the cause of 
his Country's freedom. Of heroic size the statue stands on 
a drum-like base and looks out on Broadway from the 
south-west corner of the park. 

Every line of the figure seems to speak of the sad story of 
the youthful hero, and the cord-bound ankles and pin- 
ioned arms, the placid, fearless countenance, and the defi- 
ant poise of the head told better than voice or pen the story 
of the patriot's sacrifice. The historic park was alive with 
patriotism. The scene was a most picturesque one. On the 
City Hall the flags of the State and the Nation waved in a 
bracing breeze. Facing the statue was a long platform and 
tiers of seats, all decked with the colors of the flag. There 
were men with names their ancestors had written in the 
Nation's history, and there were fair women who boast 
their descent from the patriots of the Revolution. 

On three sides of the park were the soldiers, relieving by 
the brightness of their arms and uniforms the sombre pic- 
ture of a sunless day. Most of them were of the regular 
army, parading by permission of Major-Gen. O. O. Howard, 
commanding the department of the East. The gallant old 



242 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

guard in all the majesty of huge shakos, brilliant uniforms, 
and flashing accoutrements showed their veteran training. 
There were also three batallions of marines from the United 
States ships. Sons of the Revolution, Colonial Dames of 
America, Daughters of the Revolution, and the guests of 
the day filled the platform near the statue. At three o'clock 
the strains of the First Artillery Band could be faintly 
heard up Broadway, and in a few minutes the Old Guard, 
the Marines, the Naval Brigade and the various societies 
began to tramp steadily by and make formation on three 
sides of the square. 

The excercises opened with prayer by the Rev. Morgan 
Dix, the chaplain of the Society of the Sons of the Revolu- 
tion, after which William Gaston Hamilton, Chairman of 
the Statue Committee, presented the Statue to the City. 
When the cord was pulled which released from the figure 
the Stars and Stripes which enfolded it, thousands of throats 
sent out a mighty chorus of hurrahs, bands blazed the 
favorite anthems of the Nation, and as the last fold fell 
over the wreath of laurel resting against the polished base, 
a salute of thirteen guns, fired by Light Battery K, United 
States Artillery, seemed to shake the City to its foundation. 

President Frederick Samuel Talmadge in a speech ac- 
cepted the Statue for the Society, Ma^or Gilroy accepted it 
for the City, General Howard spoke for the Army and Navy, 
and the venerable Edward Everett Hale, grand nephew of 
Nathan Hale was called upon to speak for the descendants 
of the Hale family. With this address the excercises ended, 
the band played " Hail Columbia " and the crowd gave one 
mighty cheer and drifted away. 

This occasion, I suppose, is without a parallel 
in history. Certainly I know of no other instance 
where, more than a century after the death of a 
boy of twenty-one, his countrymen assembled in 









HONOR TO THE PATRIOT SPY. 243 

such numbers as are here to do honor to Hale's 
memory, and to dedicate the statue which pre- 
serves it. Let us never forget that the monu- 
ment unveiled to-day is the monument of a 
young man ; that he is the young man's hero, let 
us never forget how the country then trusted 
young men and how worthy they were of that 
trust. Hamilton was at this time in his nine- 
teenth year and he had already won the confi- 
dence of Greene, and been invited by Washington 
into his tent. Knox, who commanded Hamil- 
ton's Regiment was about twenty-four ; Webb, 
who commanded Hale's Regiment was twenty- 
two. When in the next year Washington 
welcomed La Fayette, whom Congress appointed 
Major-General, he was not yet twenty, and 
Washington himself before whose age and exper- 
ience others stood abashed, had only attained 
the venerable age of forty-four. The Country 
needed her young men ; she called for them, and 
she had them. It is one of these young men who, 
dying at the age of twenty-one leaves as his only 
word of regret " I am sorry that I have but one 
life to give for my country " ; because that boy 
said those words, and because he died, thousands 
of other young men have given their lives each 
to his country, and served her as she bade them 
serve her, even though they died as she bade 
them die. 

The fate of Andre and the fate of Hale have 



244 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

been compared. Observe that Andre died say 
ing : " I pray you to bear me witness that I meet 
my fate like a brave man." Hale died saying : 
" I only regret that I have but one life to give 
for my country." " My Country " were his last 
words. May his country know how to train her 
boys and how to honor them so that she may be 
sure of such service and such sacrifice. 



Our Commercial Relations. 

Hon. Shelby Cullom. 

The old Washington policy of extending our 
commercial relations, but having as little politi- 
cal alliance with foreign powers as possible, is 
still imperative. This has been our policy, and 
in my judgment it should continue to be. We 
desire to be at peace with all the world. We 
are at peace with all nations — with Great Britain, 
the mother country ; with Germany, whose peo- 
ple have cast their lot with us and are numbered 
by millions ; France, Russia, Austria, and now 
with Spain, and I might add the South Ameri- 
can republics ; Japan and China. We are not 
ambitious for conquest of territory. We desire 
as a Christian nation to benefit mankind. We 
love liberty, and we will rejoice as the nations, 
one and all, shall give greater comfort and lib- 
erty to the great masses of people. It should 



OUR COMMERCIAL RELATIONS. 245 

be the duty of government to lift up the people 
to a plane of greater happiness from generation 
to generation. The whole course and history of 
the United States furnish sufficient guarantee 
for the continuance and maintenance of those 
humane and liberal principles upon which our 
system was founded. There need be no fear 
that the justice of our people will ever permit 
any policy of tyranny to be established anywhere 
under the shadow of the American flag. 

This Government prefers to be a conservator 
of peace rather than to encourage or engage in 
war. The people of this country prefer to be 
promoters of industry and commerce rather than 
be engaged in bloody conflict. We are ambi- 
tious to unfurl our sails and send our products 
into every harbor on every sea. At no time 
since the sun rose on the Constitutional Govern- 
ment of the United States has our commerce 
with foreign nations been so great as in 1898. 
We are growing rapidly to appreciate the world- 
power of commerce. 

The commerce of the world produces the im- 
pulse which largely controls the peace of the 
world. In no better way can the United States, 
as a republic, make its power felt. The exten- 
sion of its commerce means the extension of its 
power in the world. The ships of all nations 
seek our shores and bear away our products and 
manufactures to all lands. Our locomotives are 



246 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

sent to England, Russia, and China. Our ma- 
chinery and other products will soon reach the 
markets of all the nations. And this interchange 
and transportation of industries, extending around 
the world, will do more to spread peace and 
enlightenment over both hemispheres than all 
other agencies, and make this Republic from 
year to year a greater world-power. 

The nations are becoming, as time passes, 
nearer to each other. Here in our nation's capi- 
tal we celebrate the end of war in a Jubilee of 
Peace. The nations of the world are in session 
at the capital of the Netherlands in the interest 
of the peace of the world. My prayer is that 
the time may come when " nations shall not lift 
up sword against nation, neither shall they learn 
war any more, " and that " they shall beat their 
swords into ploughshares and their spears into 
pruning-hooks. " 



Dead Upon the Field of Honor. 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 

We meet to-day for a purpose that has the 
dignity and the tenderness of funeral rites with- 
out their sadness. It is not a new bereavement, 
but one which time has softened, that brings us 
here. We meet not around a newly-opened 
grave, but among those which Nature has already 



DEAD UPON THE FIELD OF HONOR. 247 

decorated with the memorials of her love. 
Above every tomb her daily sunshine has smiled, 
her tears have wept ; over the humblest she has 
bidden some grasses nestle, some vines creep, 
and the butterfly — ancient emblem of immortal- 
ity — waves his little wings above every sod. To 
Nature's signs of tenderness we add our own. 
Not " ashes to ashes, dust to dust," but blossoms 
to blossoms, laurels to the laureled. 

The great civil war has passed by — its great 
armies were disbanded, their tents struck, their 
camp-fires put out, their muster rolls laid away. 
But there is another army whose numbers no 
presidential proclamation could reduce ; no gen- 
eral orders disband. This is their camping-ground 
— these white stones are their tents — this list of 
names we bear is their muster-roll — their camp- 
fires yet burn in our hearts. 

I remember this " Sweet Auburn" when no 
sacred associations made it sweeter, and when its 
trees looked down on no funerals but those of 
the bird and the bee. Time has enriched its 
memories since those days. And especially dur- 
ing our great war, as the nation seemed to grow 
impoverished in men, these hills grew richer in 
associations, until their multiplying wealth took 
in that heroic boy who fell in almost the last 
battle of the war. Now that roll of honor has 
closed, and the work of commemoration begun. 

Without distinction of nationality, of race, of 



248 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

religion, they gave their lives to their country. 
Without distinction of religion, of race, of nation- 
ality, we garland their graves to-day. The young 
Roman Catholic convert, who died exclaiming 
" Mary ! pardon!" and the young Protestant 
theological student, whose favorite place of study 
was this cemetery, and who asked only that no 
words of praise might be engraven on his stone 
— these bore alike the cross in their lifetime, and 
shall bear it alike in flowers to-day. They gave 
their lives that we might remain one nation, and 
the nation holds their memory alike in its arms. 

And so the little distinctions of rank that 
separated us in the service are nothing here. 
Death has given the same brevet to all. The 
brilliant young cavalry general who rode into his 
last action, with stars on his shoulders and his 
death wound on his breast, is to us no more 
precious than that sergeant of sharpshooters who 
followed the line unarmed at Antietam, waiting 
to take the rifle of some one who should die, 
because his own had been stolen ; or that private 
who did the same thing in the same battle, leav- 
ing the hospital service to which he had been 
assigned. Nature has been equally tender to 
the graves of all, and our love knows no dis- 
tinction. 

What a wonderful embalmer is death ! We 
who survive grow daily older. Since the war 
closed the youngest has gained some new wrinkle, 



DEAD UPON THE FIELD OF HONOR. 249 

the oldest some added gray hairs. A few years 
more and only a few tottering figures shall repre- 
sent the marching files of the Grand Army ; a 
year or two beyond that, and there shall flutter 
by the window the last empty sleeve. But these 
who are here are embalmed forever in our imagin- 
ations ; they will not change ; they never will 
seem to us less young, less fresh, less daring, 
than when they sallied to their last battle. They 
will always have the dew of their youth ; it is we 
alone who shall grow old. 

And, again, what a wonderful purifier is death ! 
These who fell beside us varied in character ; like 
other men, they had their strength and their 
weaknesses, their merits and their faults. Yet 
now all stains seemed washed away ; their life 
ceased at its climax, and the ending sanctified all 
that went before. They died for their country ; 
that is their record. They found their way to 
heaven equally short, it seems to us, from every 
battlefield, and with equal readiness our love 
seeks them to-day. 

" What is a victory like? " said a lady to the 
Duke of Wellington. " The greatest tragedy in 
the world, madam, except a defeat." Even our 
great war would be but a tragedy were it not for 
the warm feeling of brotherhood it has left 
behind it, based on the hidden emotions of days 
like these. The war has given peace to the 
nation ; it has given union, freedom, equal rights ; 



250 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO- DA Y. 

and in addition to that, it has given to you and 
me the sacred sympathy of these graves. No 
matter what it has cost us individually — health 
or worldly fortunes — it is our reward that we can 
stand to-day among these graves and yet not 
blush that we survive. 

The great French soldier, La Tour D'Auvergne, 
was the hero of many battles, but remained by 
his own choice in the ranks. Napoleon gave him 
a sword and the official title " First among the 
grenadiers of France." When he was killed, the 
emperor ordered that his heart should be in- 
trusted to the keeping of his regiment — that his 
name should be called at every roll-call, and that 
his next comrade should make answer, " Dead 
upon the field of honor." In our memories are 
the names of many heroes ; we treasure all their 
hearts in this consecrated ground, and when the 
name of each is called, we answer in flowers, 
" Dead upon the field of honor." 



The State Versus Anarchy. 

L. Clark Seelye, D.D. , LL.D. 

President of Smith College. Abridged. 

What is anarchy? It is a very old spirit, and 
has existed from the earliest ages. It has mani- 
fested itself in every age and in nearly every 



THE STATE VERSUS ANARCHY. 25 I 

man. We see it in the child, in its first childish 
defiance of parental law. It manifests itself in 
every community ; there are anarchists here, and 
there are anarchists all over the world. Wherever 
men are determined to do their own will, or pleas- 
ure, irrespective of the laws which have been 
enacted for public welfare — there is the spirit of 
anarchy. Every criminal has it. " No thief ere 
felt the halter draw, With good opinion of the 
law. " Arson, theft, drunkenness, adultery, mur- 
der — all the horrible crimes which have ever 
been committed, are its natural fruit. And the 
unending struggle of humanity, from the earliest 
age, has been to gain the victory over this vile 
spirit, and bring it into subjection. 

In modern times, however, it appears in a 
somewhat new guise of a philosophic reformer. 
The ravening wolf comes to us, at first, in sheep's 
clothing. Anarchy poses as a social benefactor 
and propounds its theory as a sure panacea for 
existing ills. Citing the abuses and diseases of 
existing governments, it maintains that these can 
only be removed by the annihilation of govern- 
ment, that the government of any man is worse 
than useless, and the state is only another name 
for oppression. They have paraphrased Jeffer- 
son's famous maxim in the couplet, 

" The very best government of all 
Is that which governs not at all. " 

They recognize no rights of any individual or 



252 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

body of individuals to interfere with them and 
declare they will have neither state nor laws. 
Never was a theory propounded so utterly lack- 
ing in reasonable basis, so fully disproved by the 
plainest facts. 

What then is this power we call the state, the 
nation, which anarchy seeks to destroy ? Its origin 
also goes back to primeval history. The ancients 
believed it came from God, and that the ruler or 
king was God's vicegerent. In popular mytholo- 
gies, which often express in poetical form the earli- 
est conceptions of truth, the rulers and mighty 
men were said to have descended from a divine 
forefather. The body politic was regarded as a 
body divine, through which the divine law of 
righteousness was to be realized among men. 

Did not these early conceptions express, in a 
crude way, an eternal truth ? May we not believe 
that the nation, like the individual, has its origin 
in a common creator? Man no more made its 
essential sovereignty than he made himself. Men 
were created for each other, to find in their 
union as citizens their primal law of growth. As 
an old philosopher puts it, " Man is by nature a 
political being. " It is not mere mysticism when 
we speak of the nation, therefore, as a moral 
person. 

The nation as an organization we may regard 
as a divine idea. Man was created for it. It is 
bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and what 



THE STATE VERSUS ANARCHY. 253 

God hath thus joined together, man can never 
put asunder without grievous injury. 

There has been no true development of the 
individual apart from the national life. Without 
it, we have the mob, the horde, the despotism. 
The record of man's life apart from the State 
has ever been that of a slave, and a slave to the 
lowest brutal appetites, or the most debasing 
superstitions. The interests of the individual 
and the interests of the Nation have ever been 
identical. For the ideal of the Nation and of 
the individual must be the perfect freedom which 
comes from obedience to righteous law. To be 
master of himself, man must be subject to other 
men. His own will must be strengthened and 
perfected by loyal submission to the authority 
of a higher reason. The State takes from no 
man, therefore, any right when it prohibits vice. 
It maintains every right in the prohibition. He 
gains his liberty by submission to rightful law. 
True liberty exists only when man's better nature 
sits on the throne and reason exercises, unhin- 
dered, its sovereignty. 

It is no mere figure of speech, which has led 
men in so many ages and in so many parts of the 
globe to speak of the Nation as their Fatherland, 
their mother country, for they really owe to it 
their birthright and their most valuable posses- 
sions. 

In its truest sense, the Nation represents both 



254 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO- DA Y. 

fatherhood and motherhood. It is the mighty 
parent of us all, to which we owe allegiance by 
the strongest of earthly obligations. It offers its 
protection to all its citizens ; — to those who are 
most helpless and in need of succor ; it gives 
man the security of his home, the blessings of 
education, and the liberty to worship God ; it 
offers a helping hand to those who are in trouble 
and want ; it furnishes a sound basis for public 
credit, it defends us against foreign and intestine 
foes, it secures for us the fruit of our own indus- 
try ; it provides the strongest safeguards for truth, 
for liberty and for righteousness ; it is in truth 
what Milton called it, " the mighty growth and 
stature of an honest man " ordained by God to 
take from the human spirit its fetters, so that 
humanity may enter into the fullness of its life, 
and the kingdom of Heaven may be realized 
among men. 

Far, indeed is any nation from the attainment 
of its perfect form. None has yet been able to 
remove the hindrances to freedom. It is in the 
midst of this same unceasing conflict which exists 
in the individual soul. Just as we struggle in 
our individual spheres with the forces which hin~ 
der us from being what we ought to be, so the 
nation on its broader theatre of action is strug- 
gling with the forces which prevent it from help- 
ing us and others as it ought. 

In this struggle can you doubt, on which side 



What i^ trOth? 255 

a man ought to be, and which of these two ir- 
reconcilable foes — Anarchy and the State— we 
should strive to overcome ? 

Let us not forget, however, that anarchy, 
although so comparatively weak and despicable, 
can never be overcome by the use of its own 
weapons. A lawless spirit we can not extinguish 
by lawless measures. Lynching is anarchy, even 
though an anarchist be lynched. Let no sug- 
gestion of taking the law into one's own hands 
come ever from the pulpit, press, or popular 
assembly. To repress anarchy most effectually, 
we must seek first to strengthen and purify the 
government ; we must elect the best men to office 
— men who will find out and enact wise and right- 
eous laws ; we must cultivate greater respect and 
reverence for law ; we must cease to calumniate 
and villify men in the highest posts of civil 
authority ; we must educate the people and pro- 
mote reverence for God and whatsoever is true 
and good. 



What Is Truth ? 

Henry S. Pritchett, LL. D. 
President of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

In the days of the Roman Emperors the pro- 
curator of a certain conquered province in Asia 



256 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

Minor found before him two parties, each of 
whom claimed to represent the truth. On the 
one side were the religious leaders of the province, 
earnest, narrow, confident that they were the 
divinely appointed guardians of truth. On the 
other side stood one accused by them of impiety, 
unbelief, and disregard of the law. But when 
the accused spoke, his plea for truth was so noble 
and so earnest that it aroused the attention of 
even the careless and reckless procurator, and, as 
he looked in bewilderment from one to the other, 
he asked, half helplessly, " What is truth ? " 

In order that a man may reach truth, and hav- 
ing reached it make it effective, at least two 
qualities are necessary. One is what we call 
moral sense, earnestness of purpose, desire to do 
that which is true. The other is intellectual 
clearness, the ability to think. And the result 
which a man accomplishes is in large measure a 
function not of one but of both of these qualities. 

You have in mechanics a formula for the 
momentum of a moving body. This momentum 
depends both upon the mass of the body and 
upon its velocity, and is equal to the product of 
the mass by the velocity. The momentum of a 
man in the social order in respect to truth is 
represented by a similar formula. His efficiency 
equals the moral purpose multiplied into the 
ability to think straight. 

The world's history is full of the story of men 



WHA T IS TRUTH? 2tf 

who had one of these qualities and who failed by 
lack of the other. It is difficult to say which has 
done the greater harm — blind devotion which 
would not see. or intelligence which saw but 
lacked purpose and moral courage. Each has at 
one time or another filled the world with crime 
and suffering. 

There is another quality of the mind which 
ought also to enter into one's attitude toward 
truth, and which is characteristic of the scientific 
spirit and of the scientific method. This quality 
is tolerance. For how strong soever one feels 
himself to be in purpose, and how sure soever he 
may consider his conception, other men just as 
sincere, possibly as able, will discern truth in a 
different direction and approach it by a different 
path. No man, no party, no sect, and no religion 
has a divine monopoly either of truth itself or 
of the ways by which truth may be found. 

The principle that free expression of opinion 
is conceded to those who differ from the recog- 
nized authorities is a lesson which individuals 
and parties, societies and nations, have been slow 
to learn. This right, so far as social, political, 
and religious questions are concerned, is limited 
to-day by curious social and geographic lines. 
It is the boast of our Anglo-Saxon stock that 
political and religious freedom has found its 
fairest fruitage in Anglo-Saxon civilization. We 
who live under a regime which guarantees to each 



258 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

citizen freedom of thought and of speech do well 
to recall now and then the mistakes and the 
difficulties through which our fathers came to 
learn this lesson. It is a story full of the weak- 
nesses and of the strength of humanity ; a story of 
progress step by step, with many halts and back- 
ward steps; a story of cruelty and of devotion; 
of the blindness of the many and of the clear 
vision of the few ; but a story always of human 
progress toward truth. 

For the desire to compel other men to accept 
one's own view of truth has been confined to no 
class and to no age. It has been a very human 
characteristic since the days when men lived in 
caves and dressed in skins. Kings and priests, 
having had most power in their hands, have had 
most opportunity to use the argument of force. 
Mahomet found that the sword was the surest 
argument to convert a stubborn mind, and 
doubtless he was thoroughly honest in his belief. 
The priests who crucified Christ felt no doubt of 
their devotion to truth. A few centuries later 
those who called themselves followers of Christ 
found in their hands the power to persecute men 
for their opinions, and they did not hesitate to 
use it. As the Rev. John Cotton, in his con- 
troversy with Roger Williams, naively asserted, 
persecution is not wrong in itself ; " it is wicked,'* 
said he, " for falsehood to persecute truth, but it 
is the sacred duty of truth to persecute false- 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 259 

hood " ; and that teaching bore strange fruit for 
New England soil. 

We think of Boston Common as sacred to 
liberty and to freedom and to the rights of man; 
and I believe there is no spot on earth more 
truly dedicated to human freedom. Yet it has 
beheld other scenes than gatherings of indignant 
colonists or groups of patriot citizens anxious for 
their country's future. Our thoughts seldom go 
back to that October morning in 1659 when 
William Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, and 
Mary Dyer were led out on Boston Common to 
be hanged for teaching the doctrines of the 
Quakers. It is not easy for us at this day to 
realize that men and women could be hanged 
on that free soil for rejecting the doctrine of 
original sin and of the resurrection of the body, 
for denying the efficacy of baptism, and for 
asserting the absolute right of private judgment. 
And I remind you of this scene, not to compare 
our liberality with the narrowness of our fathers, 
but to call your attention to the fact that by 
their very earnestness of purpose and by their 
examination and discussion of religious questions 
the fathers found the path to truth, though long 
and rough ; persecution gave way to tolerance, 
and a colony founded to perpetuate a special 
view of divine truth became a State where any 
man may follow truth as his own heart and his 
own mind direct. And this ideal is, after all, 



26o BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

that toward which great souls have labored in 
all ages. For this scientific method is no new 
invention of the nineteenth century. The men 
who have led humanity have always been those 
who went forward with open hearts and with 
clear minds. For literature and science and poli- 
tics and religion are not separate and distinct 
things, but only different parts of the same thing ; 
different paths by which men have sought after 
beauty and truth and righteousness — and these 
are one. 

We know truth when we reach it of our own 
effort and make it our truth. The politics and 
the religion which a man inherits, without think- 
ing and without effort, count little toward his 
political and his spiritual development. Men 
differ, and will always differ, as to what truth is 
in this or in that matter, but that man finds truth 
who seeks it ; he serves truth who follows it fear- 
lessly; he serves his fellow-men who does all this 
with humility and with tolerance. 

"Grant us in this world knowledge of thy 
truth, and in the world to come life everlasting. " 
This short prayer has come down to us from one 
of the heroes of the early Church, him whom 
men called the golden-tongued ; one who, after a 
life of devotion and of courage and of tolerance, 
died at the hands of ignorance and jealousy. 
The words of this prayer, few and simple as they 
are, seem to me to ask all that a human soul can 



A NEW CENTURY GREETING. 26 1 

ask — in this world knowledge of God's truth, in 
the world to come the life everlasting. The 
educated man, the courageous man, the tolerant 
man, has no other prayer. 



A New Century Greeting. 

Andrew Carnegie, 

The world, led by the American Republic, 
took a long step upward in the closing days of 
the year, 1902. 

Last century one Russian Emperor, Alexander 
II, and one American President,Lincoln, banished 
from the civilized world human slavery — the own- 
ing of man by man. 

To-day another Russian Emperor, Nicholas 
II, and another American President, Roosevelt, 
have jointly pronounced the coming banishment 
of earth's most revolting spectacle — human war 
— the killing of man by man. 

The former suggested, the latter breathed the 
breath of life into, The Hague tribunal, the per- 
manent high court of humanity, for the peaceful 
settlement of international disputes. Henceforth 
the nation which refuses to submit its quarrel to 
this tribunal places itself in the wrong ; the 
world will believe it has not its " quarrel just." 
This will disturb its conscience and shorten its 
sword. 



262 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V, 

Differences may still arise which may not be 
submitted, the barbarous appeal to force may 
still disgrace our civilization for a time, the em- 
bers and scoriae from the seething pit of savagery 
may explode here and there at longer and longer 
intervals as time passes, but the complete ban- 
ishment of war draws near. Its death wound 
dates from the day that President Roosevelt led 
five opposing powers, four being of the very first 
rank, to the Court of Peace, and thus proclaimed 
it the appointed substitute for that which had 
hitherto stained the earth — the killing of men by 
each other. 

These four rulers must ever rank among the 
supreme benefactors of man. Whatsoever may 
lie upon the laps of the gods for the two still in 
the midst of their careers, it seems impossible 
that any other service they may yet render can 
approach that which has insured them enduring 
fame among the highest. 

It is when such a step forward as this is taken 
that we are reverently moved to exclaim, " Truly 
all is well since all grows better ; man marches 
upward ! " 



Rufus Choate. 

Hon. Joseph H. Choate. 

It is forty years since Rufus Choate strode 
the ancient streets of Boston with his majestic 



RUFUS C HO ATE, 263 

step — forty years since the marvellous music of 
his voice was heard by the living ear — and those 
who, as students and youthful disciples, followed 
his footsteps, and listened to his eloquence, and 
almost worshipped his presence, whose ideal and 
idol he was, are already many years older than 
he lived to be ; but there must be a few still 
living who were in the admiring crowds that 
hung with rapture on his lips — in the courts of 
justice, in the densely packed assembly, in the 
Senate, in the Constitutional Convention, or in 
Faneuil Hall consecrated to Freedom — and who 
can still recall, among life's most cherished mem- 
ories, the tones of that matchless voice, that 
pallid face illuminated with rare intelligence, the 
flashing glance of his dark eye, and the light of 
his bewitching smile. But, in a decade or two 
more, these lingering witnesses of his glory and 
his triumphs will have passed on, and to the next 
generation he will be but a name and a statue, 
enshrined in fame's temple with Cicero and 
Burke, with Otis and Hamilton and Web- 
ster, with Pinkney and Wirt, whose words and 
thoughts he loved to study and to master. 

Many a noted orator, many a great lawyer, 
has been lost in oblivion in forty years after the 
grave closed over him, but I venture to believe 
that the whole Bar of America, and the people 
of Massachusetts, have kept the memory of no 
other man alive and green so long, so vividly 



264 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. 

and so lovingly, as that of Rufus Choate. Many 
of his characteristic utterances have become 
proverbial, and the flashes of his wit, the play 
of his fancy and the gorgeous pictures of his 
imagination are the constant themes of reminis- 
cence, wherever American lawyers assemble for 
social converse. 

How it was that such an exotic nature, so 
ardent and tropical in all its manifestations, so 
truly southern and Italian in its impulses, and 
at the same time so robust and sturdy in its 
strength, could have been produced upon the 
bleak and barren soil of our northern cape, and 
nurtured under the chilling blasts of its east 
winds, is a mystery insoluble. Truly, " this is 
the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our 
eyes. " In one of his speeches in the Senate, he 
draws the distinction between "the cool and 
slow New England men, and the mercurial chil- 
dren of the sun, who sat down side by side in the 
presence of Washington, to form our more perfect 
union." If ever there was a mercurial child of 
the sun, it was himself most happily described. I 
am one of those who believe that the stuff that a 
man is made of has more to do with his career 
than any education or environment. The great- 
ness that is achieved, or is thrust upon some men, 
dwindles before that of him who is born great. 
His horoscope was propitious. The stars in 
their course fought for him. The birthmark of 



RUFUS CHOATE. 265 

genius, distinct and ineffaceable, was on his brow. 
He came of a long line of pious and devout ances- 
tors, whose living was as plain as their thinking 
was high. It was from father and mother that 
he derived the flame of intellect, the glow of 
spirit and the beauty of temperament that w r ere 
so unique. 

And his nurture to manhood was worthy of 
the child. It was " the nurture and admonition 
of the Lord/' From that rough pine cradle, 
which is still preserved in the room where he 
was born, to his premature grave at the age of 
fifty-nine, it was one long course of training and 
discipline of mind and character, without pause 
or rest. 

Upon the solid rock of the Scriptures he built 
a magnificent structure of knowledge and acquire- 
ment, to which few men in America have ever 
attained. History, philosophy, poetry, fiction, 
all came as grist to his mental mill. But with 
him, time was too precious to read any trash ; he 
could winnow the wheat from the chaff at sight, 
almost by touch. He sought knowledge, ideas, 
for their own sake, and for the language in which 
they were conveyed. 

His splendid and blazing intellect, fed and 
enriched by constant study of the best thoughts 
of the great minds of the race, his all-persuasive 
eloquence, his teeming and radiant imagination, 
whirling his hearers along with it, and sometimes 



266 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

overpowering himself, his brilliant and sportive 
fancy, lighting up the most arid subjects with the 
glow of sunrise, his prodigious and never-failing 
memory, and his playful wit, always bursting 
forth with irresistible impulse, have been the 
subject of scores of essays and criticisms, all 
struggling with the vain effort to describe and 
crystallize the fascinating and magical charm of 
his speech and his influence. 

And first, and far above his .splendid talents 
and his triumphant eloquence, I would place the 
character of the man — pure, honest, delivered 
absolutely from all the temptations of sordid and 
mercenary things, aspiring daily to what was 
higher and better, loathing all that was vulgar 
and of low repute, simple as a child, and tender 
and sympathetic as a woman. Emerson most 
truly says that character is far above intellect, 
and this man's character surpassed even his ex- 
alted intellect, and, controlling all his great en- 
dowments, made the consummate beauty of his 
life. I know of no greater tribute ever paid to a 
successful lawyer, than that which he received 
from Chief Justice Shaw in his account of the 
effort that was made to induce Mr. Choate to 
give up his active and exhausting practice, and 
to take the place of Professor in the Harvard Law 
School, made vacant by the death of Mr. Justice 
Story. After referring to him then, in 1847, as 
" the leader of the Bar in every department of 



RUFUS C HO ATE. 267 

forensic eloquence," and dwelling upon the great 
advantages which would accrue to the school 
from the profound legal learning which he pos- 
sessed, he said : " In the case of Mr. Choate, it 
was considered quite indispensable that he should 
reside in Cambridge, on account of the influence 
which his genial manners, his habitual presence, 
and the force of his character, would be likely to 
exert over the young men, [drawn from every 
part of the United States to listen to his instruc- 
tions." 

What richer tribute could there be to personal 
and professional worth, than such words from 
such lips? He was the fit man to mould the 
characters of the youth, not of the city or the 
State only, but of the whole nation. 

His power of labor was inexhaustible, and 
down to the last hour of his professional life he 
never relaxed the most acute and searching study, 
not of the case in hand only, but of the whole 
body of the law, and of everything in history, poe- 
try, philosophy and literature that could lend any- 
thing of strength or lustre to the performance of 
his professional duties. His hand, his head, his 
heart, his imagination were never out of training. 
Think of a man already walking the giddy heights 
of assured success, already a Senator of the 
United States from Massachusetts, or even years 
afterwards, when the end of his professional 
labors was already in sight, schooling himself to 



268 BEST AMERICAN ORA TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

daily tasks in law, in rhetoric, in oratory, seeking 
always for the actual truth, and for the " best 
language " in which to embody it — the " precisely 
one right word " by which to utter it — think of 
such a man, with all his ardent taste for the beau- 
tiful in every domain of human life, going through 
the grinding work of taking each successive vol- 
ume of the Massachusetts Reports as they came 
out, down to the last year of his practice, and 
making a brief in every case in which he had not 
been himself engaged, with new researches to see 
how he might have presented it, and thus to keep 
up with the procession of the law. Verily, " all 
things are full of labor; man cannot utter it : 
the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear 
filled with hearing." 

His name will ever be identified with trial by 
jury, the department of the profession in which 
he was absolutely supreme. He cherished with 
tenacious affection and interest its origin, its his- 
tory and its great fundamental maxims — that the 
citizen charged with crime shall be presumed 
innocent until his guilt shall be established 
beyond all reasonable doubt ; that no man shall 
be deprived by the law of property or reputation 
until his right to retain it is disproved by a clear 
preponderance of evidence to the satisfaction of 
all the twelve ; that every suitor shall be con- 
fronted with the proofs by which he shall stand 
or fall ; that only after a fair hearing, with full 



RUFUS C HO ATE. 269 

right of cross-examination, and the observance of 
the vital rules of evidence, shall he forfeit life, 
liberty or property, and then only by the judg- 
ment of his peers. 

And now in conclusion, let me speak of his patri- 
otism. His glowing heart went out to his country 
with the passionate ardor of a lover. He believed 
that the first duty of the lawyer, orator, scholar 
was to her. His best thoughts, his noblest words, 
were always for her. Seven of the best years of his 
life, in the Senate and House of Representatives, 
at the greatest personal sacrifice, he gave abso- 
lutely to her service. On every important ques- 
tion that arose, he made, with infinite study and 
research, one of the great speeches of the debate. 
He commanded the affectionate regard of his 
fellows, and of the watchful and listening nation. 
He was a profound and constant student of her 
history, and revelled in tracing her growth and 
progress from Plymouth Rock and Salem Harbor, 
until she filled the continent from sea to sea. 
He loved to trace the advance of the Puritan 
spirit, with which he was himself deeply imbued, 
from Winthrop and Endicott, and Carver and 
Standish, through all the heroic periods and 
events of colonial and revolutionary and national 
life, until, in his own last years, it dominated and 
guided all of Free America. He knew full well, 
and displayed in his many splendid speeches and 
addresses, that one unerring purpose of freedom 



270 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO- DA Y. 

and of Union ran through her whole history ; 
that there was no accident in it all ; that all the 
generations, from the Mayflower down, marched 
to one measure and followed one flag ; that all 
the struggles, all the self-sacrifice, all the prayers 
and the tears, all the fear of God, all the soul- 
trials, all the yearnings for national life, of more 
than two centuries, had contributed to make the 
country that he served and loved. 



The Commerce Clause of the Constitution 
and the Trusts. 

Abridged. 

Hon. Philander C. Knox. 

The extent to which legislative control over 
commercial activities should be exercised is, of 
course, a question for legislative wisdom. We 
have the experience of the other nations to guide 
us in determining how far the delicate and mys- 
terious rules of trade can be interfered with by 
positive statutes without injury. That experi- 
ence teaches us that the least interference con- 
sistent with the preservation of essential rights 
should exist. Arbitrary regulations that restrain 
free intercourse are usually found to be unwise. 

Primarily it is for the Congress to decide 
whether it has the power, and whether and to 
what extent it will execute it — what character of 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE TRUSTS. 2J\ 

restraints, whether all or those only which are 
unreasonable and injurious shall fall under the 
ban, whether legislation in the first instance 
should extend to all commerce or only to com- 
merce in articles of vital importance to the 
people. The time never was when the English- 
speaking people permitted the articles necessary 
for their existence to be monopolized or con- 
trolled, and all devices to that end found con- 
demnation in the body of their laws. The great 
English judges pronounced that such manifes- 
tations of human avarice required no statute to 
declare their unlawfulness, that they were crimes 
against common law — that is, against common 
right. 

It is difficult to improve upon the great un- 
written code known as the common law. Under 
its salutary guaranties and restraints the Eng- 
lish-speaking people have attained their wealth 
and power. It condemns monopoly, and con- 
tracts in restraint of trade as well. The dis- 
tinction, however, between restraints that are 
reasonable in view of all the circumstances and 
those which are unreasonable, is recognized and 
has been followed in this country by the courts. 

This distinction makes a rule that may be 
practically applied, and preserves the rational 
mean between unrestrained commerce and the 
absolute freedom of contract. 

A law regulating interstate commerce for its 



272 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OE TO-DAY. 

protection against restraint, so broad as to cover 
all persons whose business is conducted under 
agreements which are in any way or to any ex- 
tent in restraint of trade, might exclude thou- 
sands of small concerns conducting industries in 
one State from marketing their products in 
others ; but a law which only covers contracts 
and combinations in restraint of trade, as defined 
by the common law, would exclude all hurtful 
combinations and conspiracies. Congress can, if 
it sees fit, adopt the scheme of that law. In the 
enforcement of such law each case as it arose 
would be considered upon its own facts, and the 
rule of guidance would be as laid down by the Su- 
preme Court of the United States ; that is, " pub- 
lic welfare is first considered, and if it be not 
involved and the restraint upon one party is not 
greater than protection to the other party re- 
quires, the contract may be sustained. The 
question is whether, under the particular circum- 
stances of the case and the nature of the particu- 
lar contract involved in it, the contract is, or is 
not, reasonable„ 

Let me give you an illustration showing the 
difference between a reasonable and unreason- 
able arrangement or contract at common law. 
First, as to a reasonable one — 

The case of a sale of a business and its good- 
will is a good illustration. Here a restricted 
covenant upon the part of the vendor not to 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE TRUSTS. 273 

engage in competition in a similar business is 
often the main consideration for the transaction. 
This covenant is, of course, in restraint of trade, 
and interferes with competition. But to make a 
contract such as this illegal is not only restrictive 
of the liberty of contract, but it is depriving one 
of his property without due process of law. 
Good-will is property capable of being appraised, 
bought, and sold. In many cases it is the main 
ingredient of value. It represents all the strug- 
gle, industry, tact and judgment that make suc- 
cess. In estimating the worth of a business it is 
not infrequently reckoned more valuable than 
the buildings and machinery that make up the 
physical plant. 

Such a contract has been held reasonable and 
valid. 

Now as to an unreasonable agreement let me 
quote an illustration from the pen of a Justice of 
the Supreme Court : 

"In Morris Run Coal Co. v. Barclay Coal Co. 
(in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania) the 
principal question was as to the validity of a 
contract made between five coal corporations of 
Pennsylvania, by which they divided between 
themselves two coal regions, of which they had 
the control. The referee in the case found that 
those companies acquired under their arrange- 
ment the power to control the entire market for 
bituminous coal in the northern part of the State, 



274 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

and their combination was, therefore, a restraint 
upon trade and against public policy. In re- 
sponse to the suggestion that the real purpose of 
the combination was to lessen expenses, to ad- 
vance the quality of coal, and to deliver it in the 
markets intended to be supplied in the best 
order to the consumer, the Supreme Court of 
Pennsylvania said : 

" This is denied by the defendants ; but it seems to us it is 
immaterial whether these positions are sustained or not. 
Admitting their correctness, it does not follow that these 
advantages redeem the contract from the obnoxious effects 
so strikingly presented by the referee. The important fact 
is that these companies control this immense coal field ; that 
it is the great source of supply of bituminous coal to the 
State of New York and large territories westward ; that by 
this contract they control the price of coal in this extensive 
market, and make it bring sums it would not command if 
left to the natural laws of trade ; that it concerns an article 
of prime necessity for many uses ; that its operation is gen- 
eral in this large region, and affects all who use coal as a 
fuel, and this is accomplished by a combination of all the 
companies engaged in this branch of business in the large 
region where they operate. The combination is wide in 
scope, general in its influence, and injurious in its effects. 
These being its features, the contract is against public 
policy, illegal, and therefore void. " 

The question of reasonableness is thus one for 
the courts to determine, and it is manifest that 
this doctrine gives play to just considerations of 
the freedom and inviolability of contracts with 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE TRUSTS. 2J^ 

proper judicial safeguards against unconscionable 
arrangements rightly void as contrary to public 
policy. The Sherman Act is entitled, " An act 
to protect trade and commerce against unlawful 
restraints," etc., and the able dissenting opinion 
in one of the leading cases in the Supreme Court 
argues from this indication and other considera- 
tions that the restraints intended to be stricken 
off were only those unreasonable restraints as de- 
fined at common law. But the law was authori- 
tatively decided to include all restraints, whether 
reasonable or unreasonable. Nevertheless, in ex- 
tending the law it might be deemed wise by Con- 
gress now to import and impose this distinction 
clearly, for the following reasons among others : 
Because the hard and fast extreme rule may 
work injustice in various instances where a mod- 
erate restraint is either not harmful at all to 
the general interests, or only slightly so in com- 
parison with the importance of the freedom and 
sacredness of many contracts which public policy 
does not manifestly condemn ; because the ques- 
tion of reasonableness, as in the common law, 
should be for the courts — surely the safest arbiter 
and reliance in human disputes — and because, 
from the economic standpoint, freer play would 
thus be given, and perhaps " a way out " indi- 
cated, in the conflict between the important 
principles of free competition and combination. 
We have no certain knowledge of the nature 



2j6 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

and effect of the natural laws which are carrying 
forward evolution in economic and social phe- 
nomena as in all other branches of biology. But 
we may be confident that in some sort and with 
whatever perversions, public policies, constitu- 
tional charters of government, and municipal 
laws roughly manifest these natural laws and re- 
flect their main tendencies. Proper free play of 
forces might be maintained by importing into 
the situation the idea of " reasonableness " and 
judicial determination thereof, for the due con- 
trol of unnecessarily destructive competition ; 
and, for preventing the opposite danger, by de- 
vising a system of regulation which would strike 
the evils of combination at the heart and aid 
in the great object of restraining hurtful re- 
straints and monopolies, especially as to the 
prime necessities of life. 

The conditions of our commercial life are the 
result in part of an evolution of forces of world- 
wide operation. They have developed gradually, 
and are not, perhaps, fully understood. Laws 
regulating and controlling their operation, before 
they ripen into a complete system of wise juris- 
prudence, will be of gradual growth. 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 277 

Phillips Brooks. 

Abridged. 

James H. Baker, M. A., LL. D. 

President of University of Colorado. 

Contributed by the author. 

Among the men who did notable work dur- 
ing the latter part of the Nineteenth Century 
was Phillips Brooks. Here was a man who 
succeeded, to whom men willingly listened, who 
fostered the best ideals of all who came under his 
influence. 

To most people an accentuated life has a 
stronger attraction; we enjoy expression of one- 
sided ability, emotional, intellectual or practical. 
Eccentricities of genius are spice to more substan- 
tial qualities. Brooks was a normal man, a well- 
balanced character. His interest was in the great- 
est problems of humanity, and it is as true to- 
day as when Plato taught, that in the world of 
knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, 
and is seen only with an effort. Yet he, using 
none of the arts by which false or superficial 
reputation is made, interested men of every type 
in ethical and religious thought — the highest 
proof of spiritual power. 

As with all great men, Phillips Brooks' genius 
lay in his receptiveness and his energy. His 
mind was open to the whole field of knowledge 



278 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. 

and to all best ideas and influences — beauties 
in nature, traits of character, material and social 
forces, thoughts of the greatest writers. He 
selected the useful material and rejected the 
worthless and harmful. He was able to give 
bountifully, because he received largely. Withal 
he had the power to work prodigiously, and he 
took up each duty with intense earnestness. 
Like every man who in any field ever won glory, 
he prepared for his success with drudging, per- 
severing labor, directed toward definite results. 
There was no mental or moral imbecility, no 
paralysis of will, no unused, wasted or misdirected 
energy — the marks of human folly and failure. 
He conserved his splendid powers and applied 
them. 

In character he was simple, natural, frank, 
strong of will, of fine instincts, hating the base, 
and loving whatever was beautiful and noble. 
Power, whether in natural forces or in thought 
and will, strongly attracted him. He had a sane 
mind, judging men and events wisely. He had 
an optimism and common-sense faith that carried 
him safely through the trying period of mate- 
rialistic thought which characterized the latter 
half of the Nineteenth Century. 

To his power for work and his sound character 
were added traits necessary for practical success : 
a sincere and honest bearing ; strong convictions 
spoken in simple and earnest manner ; a sunny 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 279 

expression ; a most saving spirit of mirth which 
never wearied ; and above all, a sympathetic 
knowledge of men or rather of the nature of man, 

We respect him for his broad view and tolerant 
spirit. Here was a man who advocated candor 
in the pulpit concerning growing interpretations 
of religious truth, and could publicly thank God 
for the life and work of any good man however 
he might differ in belief. He was thoroughly 
progressive in spirit, and this bit of humor and 
philosophy is very significant: "The Puritans! 
How glad I am they lived and that they don't 
live now. " 

It is said of the greatest men that they 
belong to no particular time or place. Homer 
and Aristotle are modern. We hail a new genius 
in so far as he views the incidents of current 
history in large perspective. This man was 
claimed by several religious denominations, for he 
spoke great truths found in all creeds because 
common to all minds. 

His knowledge of human nature was gained 
partly by direct analysis, partly by instinctive 
induction from his own nature. He could 
make men conscious of their own proper stand- 
ards for self-respect, and for this reason merchants 
and laborers would leave their work on week 
days and listen to him with respectful and deep 
interest. 

In his life and teachings he gave supreme 



280 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

emphasis to character. There are outward mis- 
fortunes which youth may encounter, when real 
work in life begins, and over these one may 
usually triumph ; but the inner defect of an 
errant purpose and a weak will is the great mis- 
fortune and causes most of the outward evils. 
The theme is, of course, painfully trite, but char- 
acter to-day is approaching par value. When 
in the strict business world, a life-assurance pol- 
icy, or a railroad appointment practically implies 
a temperance pledge, and a fidelity bond pre- 
supposes a successful examination in morals, and 
business men proclaim there is little permanent 
success without the policy of honesty, we may 
well take a new view of the matter. Character 
is the indispensable qualification for almost any 
business, is the passport to good society, is 
needed in politics and all social relations, is the 
solution of industrial and social problems. Char- 
acter is the surviving ideal of chivalry ; it is the 
ground of self-respect ; it is the consummate 
flower of the evolutionary process, the practical 
foundation of religion, and the mark of our divine 
nature. Strong fathers and loving mothers, 
when they send their sons and daughters into 
the world, wish them happiness and prosperity, 
but supremely do they pray for a noble and 
beautiful life. 

Tendency toward wise conduct is inborn, but 
its realization depends upon the material for 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 28 1 

growth. Capacity means nothing without ideas. 
Brooks succeeded because he constantly received 
from many and the best sources. Of highest 
importance is the nature of our images and ideas. 
No skill of alchemy ever turned base metal into 
gold ; good character cannot be made from base 
images, and trivial interests. He who chooses 
the evil when the good is offered is undoubtedly, 
as old Plato philosophized, a fool, and so much 
the worse for him. The cunning of the artisan, 
the discoveries of science, the heroism of every- 
day life, the standards of men who have com- 
bined greatness with goodness, nature's sym- 
bolism, are lessons for the wise. 

In Tennyson's Idylls, King Arthur makes his 
knights-errant swear to reverence their conscience 
as their king, to redress human wrongs, to honor 
their own word, to lead sweet lives in purest 
chastity, to keep down the base, learn high 
thought, amiable words, love of truth, and all 
that makes a man. The Arthurian legends have 
come down to us from a remote past, and the 
poet's use of them is largely metaphorical ; but 
we have to-day many King Arthurs of blameless 
life, crowned by nature, as our exemplars. We 
can choose our own companions of our round 
table. The Sacred City of Camelot, where dwelt 
the ideal knights, is our own habitation, for it is 
but symbolic of the spiritual development of 
man. We need not go forth in pursuit of the 



282 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

Holy Grail, for the sacred cup but represents the 
next duty, however humble, at hand. 



Labor and Capital. 

Abridged. 
Hon. Marcus A. Hanna. 

Organized labor, or as we know it better, 
" union labor," is an imported article. It came 
to us with the influx of population from the old 
world, having been established and in operation 
many years in Europe, and particularly in Eng- 
land. It came to us having been born among 
conditions — which do not and cannot exist in 
America — where the education and the experi- 
ences of men taught them to antagonize the 
upper class, and strange as it may seem, the very 
men who came from the forge and from the 
workshop laid the foundation of our great indus- 
trial institutions. But those people came full of 
the same prejudice that was inaugurated there — 
with an antagonism to capital, and feeling that 
every man's interests, who was or had been an 
employer, was against theirs, until they in turn 
became the employers. 

It is an institution prompted by workingmen 
who seek to protect themselves, whose object 
is mutual benefit. During its early history in 
this country there was a natural prejudice 



LABOR AND CAPITAL. 283 

against it, because it seemed at variance with 
American institutions, because it seemed to 
place itself in antagonism to the employers of 
this country. But it is one of the objects on the 
part of those who are working for this cause to 
Americanize labor organizations, to fit them for 
their surroundings and conditions in this 
country ; and to that end the organization called 
the Civic Federation is now bringing the atten- 
tion of the public to that question. 

The motto of the Civic Federation is the 
" Golden Rule," and its basic policy is that any- 
thing which is antagonistic to the best interests 
of society and morals shall be eradicated. We 
do not believe in sympathetic strikes. We do 
not believe in the boycott. We do not believe 
in restriction of production to enhance values. 
And from that platform we propose to urge and 
to advocate a code of principles and a policy 
which will elevate those who are called upon to 
arbitrate for labor to a position where they will 
fully appreciate that this is a better way. 

Every man has a vulnerable spot. There is a 
side to every man's character that is approach- 
able, and the most vulnerable of all methods is 
kindness. Appeal to his heart and to his mind 
with reason and you will succeed in establishing 
a bond of confidence, and that is the foundation. 
The first thing to be done practically in our 
efforts to accomplish the best for which we are 



284 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

striving is to establish a condition between the 
employer and employee of absolute confidence 
one in the other. Remember the Golden Rule, 
and to make this proposition practical, live up to 
the principles of the Golden Rule. Is it pract- 
ical? Yes. You will treat those men as you 
would have those men treat you. 

We have to be thankful for an era of pros- 
perity unequaled in our history. We are all so 
busy now that we are likely to forget whence it 
comes. Our condition may be the natural 
sequence of favorable crops, of improved machin- 
ery, and an enterprising people, but after all, 
there is a higher power which regulates it all. 
It is our duty while enjoying this prosperity and 
its fruits, when we come to consider the mate- 
rial interests at stake, to remember that there 
are two factors along that line which contribute 
to it : the men who work with their hands, and 
the men who work with their brains ; partners in 
toil who should be partners in the benefits of 
that toil. 

Have you ever thought what an influence we 
are receiving into our body politic when we read 
the statistics of the thousands, ay, hundreds of 
thousands of immigrants coming to this country 
every year from the lowest social conditions of 
the old world, full of prejudice and always " agin 
the government"? It is a serious proposition, 
particularly as they very soon become voters, 



LABOR AND CAPITAL. 285 

and have a way of expressing their sentiments 
that is very potent at times. It is a factor, and 
it is a thing to be considered. We have to con- 
sider those men as useful to us, yes, necessary 
under such conditions as we have to-day. But 
they are unlettered, untaught ; they know 
nothing about the spirit and the institutions of 
our country. Some of them, unfortunately, 
think liberty is license, or something to eat. It 
is not wonderful that they should affiliate with 
their own class and be content to work it out, 
and if necessary, to fight it out from that stand- 
point. 

Forget the idea that there are any classes 
under our free government. Forget that in this 
great principle of social advancement there is 
any line of demarkation. Forget that the man 
who labors with his hands is different from the 
man who labors with his brain. Bring all to- 
gether upon that common platform of principle, 
and then give to it the impulse of your better 
advantages and education, of your greater and 
wider experiences, of your ability through mate- 
rial resources, to help every man who needs it, 
and you have resolved the thing to a practical 
proposition which will admit of no doubt about 
its future success, provided you do not tire in 
doing good. 

A good proposition to any Doubting Thomas 
who talks about the theory of the question is, 



286 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

" Try it yourself." Take one man whom you 
know in your community, who works with his 
hands, whether on the streets, in the shops, or in 
the factories. Acquaint yourself with the con- 
ditions against which he must contend to make 
a living for himself and family ; see what oppor- 
tunities he has, compare them with your own, 
and then ask yourself, Is there anything I can do 
to help the situation? Is that theory? You 
may find that sickness or other misfortune has 
come to him. He is too proud to ask alms. If 
you find that he and his family are suffering 
under these conditions, do not wait until he gets 
to the poorhouse, or a committee organized by 
law shall ascertain these facts, but make your- 
self responsible. Is there any better way by 
which you can bring him into closer business 
relations than to show him that you recognize 
his manhood and are working for the best con- 
ditions the community can give to carry him on 
through the work and trials of life? 

The practical result of a strike, nine times out 
of ten, comes from a misunderstanding or from 
indifference on the part of one side or the other. 

Experience has shown that the men who are 
associated with the civic Federation on the part 
of labor, twelve of them, all leaders of great 
labor organizations, are just as competent, in 
conferences upon this subject, just as earnest 
and just as honest in their treatment of this 



LABOR AND CAPITAL. 287 

matter as the other side. Recognize that fact, 
give them credit, and the battle is more than 
half won. Make them feel that your interest in 
them is for the mutual benefit of both, and 
believe in their sensibility and their ability to 
manage their affairs as well as you can manage 
yours, and you will create a trust that no law 
can break ; the kind of trust for which you need no 
constitutional amendment. It is a great, broad 
principle on which the very foundations of our 
government rest. 

There is a great deal said, from a demagogical 
standpoint, against organized capital. Looking 
back through the last hundred years we are 
almost bewildered at the complexity of improve- 
ments in every industrial phase of our institu- 
tions, improvements which have advanced the 
interest of the laboring men as well as that of 
the capitalist. This rapid advance is the culmi- 
nation of educated intellect by its practical appli- 
cation to every form of industry and every 
profession. It is just as natural a sequence as 
that one following upon the rising and the set- 
ting sun. Organized capital was just as neces- 
sary to get this condition of things, as any part 
of it. This organization of capital has come to 
stay, just as organized labor has come to stay, 
and for the same reason it is necessary. You 
cannot separate the interests of capital and labor. 
If it is good for one to be organized for any pur- 



288 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

pose, it is good for the other for the same reason. 
They are both good. They are both necessary, 
as applied to our conditions to-day and to our 
development for the future. The combination 
of capital has brought to our industrial institu- 
tions greater economic results ; it has brought 
an increase and expansion of trade, and higher 
wages to the men. When you talk about organ- 
ized capital as a monopoly in this country you 
talk nonsense. There is no monopoly in the 
United States save that protected by a United 
States patent, for there is not a field of industry 
in this country not open to anyone and every- 
one who sees fit to embark capital in that line. 

As capital is organized and produces beneficial 
results, labor which was organized many years 
before and has grown in efficiency ever since, 
will be the first to recognize, and it does recog- 
nize to-day, the fact that the organization of cap- 
ital and the combination of talent and capital 
produces results which give to them better op- 
portunities. When you reflect that many of the 
great masters in every branch of industry in the 
United States came from the loom and forge and 
furnace, you can see the inducement for compe- 
tition. 

The object lesson stands bright before the 
operator when he with his rod is working at the 
furnace to-day and remembers that the man who 
pays him, once worked there himself. When 



A RETROSPECT OF ORATORY. 289 

you attempt to put a check on enterprise backed 
by ability and brains, you limit all progress by 
saying that you must not have any organizations, 
that they are a detriment to the country. They 
are not. Union is not only strong for the mu- 
tual benefit of labor, but strong for the develop- 
ment of enterprise and ability diverse in their 
motives, but which when brought together form 
a force which is irresistible. There is a combi- 
nation not only of money, but of everything that 
contributes to the successful putting together 
of material and intellect and ability and pushing 
it to its furthest limits, and already that enter- 
prise has reached far beyond the confines of our 
borders. 



A Retrospect of Oratory. 

Lorenzo Sears. 

From "The History of Oratory." By permission of 
Scott, Foresman and Company, Publishers. 

A RETROSPECT of oratory during twenty-four 
centuries is not unlike a glance along the horizon 
line of a mountain range with its elevations and 
depressions ; for the history of eloquence, like 
that of liberty, its companion, is marked by 
diversified fortunes. On this horizon there are 
lofty peaks showing where volcanic fires reared 
their monuments ; there are lesser heights beside 



29O BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. 

them and low table lands and shadowy valleys 
and sunless gorges. 

The mountain tops, upon which light perpetu- 
ally lingers are named for the Greek Demos- 
thenes and Cicero the Roman ; for John of Anti- 
och and Tertullian of Carthage and Ambrose of 
Milan ; for Savonarola of Florence, Peter of 
Picardy, Jaques de Vitry and his successors at 
the court of Louis the Great. Westward there 
is a giant group in England, and across the 
ocean another group upholding the honor of free 
and fearless speech in the remotest West. A 
more deliberate view also reveals eloquence and 
liberty going hand in hand from the Orient to 
the Occident; in Greece amidst Hellenic resis- 
tance to Asiatic despotism, in Rome, in a long 
warfare against imperialism, in the early Church, 
against papal usurpation, in mediaeval ages, 
against the sacrilege of the Saracen, at the Re- 
formation, in protest against ecclesiastical cor- 
ruption, in France, against the dominion of Satan 
in high places, and later against the grinding 
oppression of the people by kings. In England, 
voices are lifted up for authority tempered with 
justice and generosity, in America for equal 
rights of all subjects of the Crown, and afterward 
for general liberty under the laws, with the nat- 
ural sequence of freedom to all the inhabitants 
of the land. In all this movement there can also 
be observed diverse phases of expression in differ- 
ent ages and countries. Attic simplicity and 



A RETROSPECT OF ORATORY. 2g I 

strength running into Asian splendor, degenera- 
ting at length into barbaric tawdriness, followed 
by a restored severity not untainted with the 
finery of a later time, passing into an almost sav- 
age crudeness, uncouth and grotesque, to be 
refined at last by the revival of letters to a style 
blending the classic and romantic tendencies, 
which henceforward will fare on together accord- 
ing to the temperament of each nation, age, and 
orator as the subject, the issue, and the occasion 
shall demand. In all the long procession there 
is also a similar variety of method and manner 
and form, the same repetition of unchangeable 
principles in a diversity of manifestation that pre- 
vails in material and immaterial nature through- 
out the universe, so far as observation has reached; 
variety in unity, diversity of form amidst uni- 
formity of law, changing phases of expression, 
but ceaseless persistance of purpose toward larger 
truth, a larger liberty, and a nobler life. Until, 
however, these are more completely attained it 
cannot be affirmed that the movement which has 
continued so long with various degrees of accelera- 
tion will wholly cease, or that there will be no 
need of the speaking man in the future. There- 
fore the necessity still remains of gathering up 
the lessons left by masters of the art in the past, 
that, profiting by their successes and their fail- 
ures, the men of the present and the future may 
know how they can best instruct, convince and 
persuade. 



Do YOU know HOW to Attract 
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